It is possible that a reader of this blog might not actually understand what my "KESTS to GEO" conceptual design is, someone who might actually desire to know. So here is another attempt to explain it briefly. Its first function would be to enable, finally, the construction of enough Solar Electric Power Satellites in GEO to supply the whole world with adequate really clean electrical energy to power civilization's advancement.
(I had written this recently to improve the initial part of my kestsgeo.com website, but found that something is blocking me from doing ftp to my website, so I cannot fix my website; I get a message that says my username is not allowed access. The ISP support does not answer my email about it. Probably what happens in a system where passwords and ID are sent unprotected; and the easy-money crowd decides to make a harvest. So, I will put it here in a blog.)
So here goes: this is to suggest that there is "another" (that is, a non-tether space elevator) possible technique to support structures that reach from the ground all the way up to high orbital altitudes, enabling economical large scale space access; and thus enabling a huge expansion of civilization while also thereby restoring the Earth's fragile ecosystem. Come dream with me a moment; once you see it clearly, you will see it is obvious (and therefore is not "new & innovative" since everybody must have known it all the time.)
Basic principle of structural support: The outward centrifugal force on the mass of the armature of an electric motor that is in hoop-form encircling the planet, a force thus in opposition to the force of gravity at its location. The structural support means is similar to the principle that enables a satellite to be in an orbit, the outward centrifugal force component of circular motion on its moving mass, balances the inward force of gravity on its mass. Except, in the structural support application, the circulating mass is going very much faster than its orbital altitude would balance, its excess outward centrifugal force component being used to balance the weight of the planet-encircling structural mass within which it slides around at high velocity, which is the structure enabling economical large scale space access.
That is the basic mechanism of structural support being described here. There are many other mechanisms involved to implement such an energy-supported structure that reaches from the ground, such as from surface-connection at some place on the Equator, all the way up to orbital altitudes, including up to GEO. Such as mechanisms for maintaining a hard vacuum environment for the high velocity mass streams while they flow through the earth's atmosphere in the lower part of their loop. And mechanisms for very slippery sliding between the high velocity mass and the supported structure it pushes upward against, all around the loop.
Integrated mechanism: A fairly well integrated overall structural mechanism utilizing the basic structural support principle, coalesces into the form of a multiple armature synchronous electric motor, overall. The armatures are shoved along as they cruise past the ground terminal, inputting kinetic energy to the system. The armatures mass push outward, upward against the non-moving magnetic levitation track-ways in which they slide along under the supported structure loop. And the armatures inductively share some of their upward momentum with vehicles they pass by, lifting the vehicles up and down the structure between ground and space.
Major advantage: And that is the point of it all, that the payload carrying vehicles carry no fuel mass for the journey, which is the really big energy hog of conventional rocket transportation between ground and orbit. Rockets have to lift the immense mass of the fuel that will be used to get to orbit, and that is where most of the work is spent getting payload into orbit, in the lifting of the fuel and of the fuel tanks and engines needed to lift that huge mass off the ground. Consider what a light weight vehicle would be needed, if it did not have to also lift the fuel mass needed to make the journey. A vehicle that is also gently lowered back to the ground on return, its energy returned to the system instead of through re-entry heating.
Electrically powered space access: That the transportation structure system is entirely electrically powered, also implies some interesting potentials. The lack of atmospheric pollutants from the rocket propellants is an obvious one, that becomes more significant it the lift of a large amount of payload is being considered. Such as for building the long-envisioned Solar Power Satellites in GEO. Some of that beamed-down electrical energy could be used to power the transportation structure itself, thus a large scale space access transportation system becomes no burden to the planetary system thereafter.
Transportation energy cost: So what is the basic energy cost to lift something from the ground and put it into GEO? Well, a bit of thought shows it has to be less than the energy needed to impart the "escape velocity" to that mass. That is to speed it up to 25,000 mph, which is 7.9 KWh of energy per pound of mass. That is 80 cents a pound if electrical energy costs 10 cents per KWh, or 8 cents per pound if energy costs 1 cent per KWh. Since GEO is significantly short of the infinite distance that "escape velocity" theorizes, only 7.15 KWh per pound to GEO, lifted from the equator, is the energy imparted to the mass as it is lifted up there and given orbital velocity at GEO altitude of 22,300 miles above the equator. That is 72 cents of electrical energy, if energy costs 10 cents per KWh, per pound delivered into GEO. However....
Relative efficiency: No transportation system is 100% efficient, and transportation process energy would be added to the overall energy consumption involved in the transportation system. Yet we are starting with a figure of 7.15 KWh, and even with a lot if added energy, it still is an insignificant amount of energy as compared to that used by the Space Shuttle, for example, or the launch vehicles now used to put communication satellites in GEO. A really tiny amount of energy.
Exploring what then would become possible: And that would make economical projects in GEO, that are now quite impossible due to the reaction engine launch vehicle transportation technique we are now limited to.
Such projects are interactive with the chosen transportation system. For example, by lifting the structural materials up to GEO with which to build plentiful Solar Power Satellites, which would power the transportation system itself, as well as providing abundant clean electrical energy for civilization around the world.
That itself would be justification for the transportation system's creation. But once in place, there are many other things that become possible too, that are otherwise not feasible. They include such things as high capacity materials processing in the zero-gee, hard vacuum, solar powered environment in GEO, with its potential for total recycling of industrial waste materials. Imagine the space exploration vehicles that could be built in GEO, their mass and fuel electrically lifted up there, already 91% up out of earth's gravitational energy well, ready to head for the Moon, asteroids, and other planets to explore, gather raw materials, and bring life to where there had been no life before. In GEO, we could build the "Stanford Torus" rotating city of 10,000 self-supporting people, originally designed for construction in L-5 back in the mid-1970's, except now build-able out of materials brought up from the earth surface instead of from the Moon's surface; and its population also lifted up there electrically just as easily, and easy commute back and forth. The potentials go on from there.
Remember what became possible due to the creation of a railway system across America, as compared to what was possible with horses and ox-drawn Conestoga wagon trains. What had been impossible became quite possible and eventually everyday to people. Such expansion potentials are foreseeable here, too.
And provides justification for serious examination of transportation systems based on the basic principle of excess outward centrifugal force of mass in a loop around a planet, being used the balance the weight of the hoop-shaped structure.
Friday, July 20, 2007
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Philosophically exploring efficient biofuels
Chatting via e-mail with my normally too busy daughter who had recently graduated with a degree in Horticulture, I had been pointing out recent articles about higher quality biofuels made from fruit, fuel better than ethanol. I had suggested possibility of using fruit, leaves, stem, root material and forming into containers so as to efficiently go direct from sunlight into fruit material with a minimum of extraneous material normally associated with fruit tree orchard production.
She responded something about "mad scientist" and messing with life. So I have responded, and perhaps it all would be appropriate for my energy blog here.
I then wrote:
"There are scientific, economic, and philosophical considerations that can be involved, true.
And yes the image of the mad scientist can be a valid one, where the scientist has been so long bent into the linear scientific analysis process that it is no longer possible to straighten up and look around to see the greater world about, and to see where one's own analytic scientific task is fitting into the much greater picture, and deciding if it is still going in a wholesome direction into the larger picture.
Philosophically speaking, plant physiology as directed to fruit production, I believe, is designed to dangle out that tasty fruit for some critter to amble by and appreciatively munch, to later deposit a mound of nice fertilizer which contains some of the surviving seeds. Maybe one can also philosophize it as the plant giving the critter a gift of tasty fruit in return for going and planting more of its kind. Everybody wins.
As for the manipulation of life forms, the razing of a pine forest and planting rows of apple trees and harvesting the apples later, seems to have messed with nature quite a bit. Also, sometimes a tree is partly grown, then cut off a few feet above the ground and spliced with the trunk and leaves of a different kind of tree, to provide a hardiness. Isn't that also messing with nature? When one bites into an apple and crushes it with the teeth and munches it down, the apple gets really mangled ... is that not messing with it?
So if one were to figure out how to take a bit of apple fruit cells, stem, leaf material (maybe from the parts that were headed into the garbage can and landfill) and getting them all to grow in a more efficient conversion process from sunlight into biofuel, it seems not much different philosophically.
However, plants and animals that get domesticated by civilization, tend to flourish, but other kinds of creatures get crushed out of the way, lost. So if apple fruit material could be grown in sheets for biofuels, it might also then get cookie-cuttered into neat efficient packages for sale instead of apples, and then apples themselves might cease to be tended in orchards.
Such changes need to be responsibly orchestrated into the bigger picture; which unfortunately is rarely done nowadays since "there is no money in it." Only in the long term, big picture, are such things visible as being very economically wise. Growing small apple orchards, or apple trees as part of a forested landscape of diversity in a responsibly tended way, might become a part of civilization's solid progress. Same philosophy for all other kinds of fruit trees ... and other food sources.
OK I can't resist flapping away more with this, and so visualizing growing a tree whose trunk is in the size and shape of a 2 x 4 stud 8 feet long at harvest. No huge logger trucks or sawmill needed. And I recall when I was a boy, fantasizing growing houses by planting and tending various kinds of trees and vines etc to grow into the frame and walls and roof of a house. One could start on a plot of land and start growing such houses; when the first one was adequately grown, install remainder of plumbing, electricity, and move in, live there while tending houses nearby similarly, producing houses year after year for sale, a type of farming. I have it mentioned somewhere on one of my web pages probably one of my old earthlink.net/~jedcline pages, since several years ago I got an email from someone in Hawaii who was building a full sized home supported by three - Banyan? - trees, had seen the page and was looking for ideas."
She responded something about "mad scientist" and messing with life. So I have responded, and perhaps it all would be appropriate for my energy blog here.
I then wrote:
"There are scientific, economic, and philosophical considerations that can be involved, true.
And yes the image of the mad scientist can be a valid one, where the scientist has been so long bent into the linear scientific analysis process that it is no longer possible to straighten up and look around to see the greater world about, and to see where one's own analytic scientific task is fitting into the much greater picture, and deciding if it is still going in a wholesome direction into the larger picture.
Philosophically speaking, plant physiology as directed to fruit production, I believe, is designed to dangle out that tasty fruit for some critter to amble by and appreciatively munch, to later deposit a mound of nice fertilizer which contains some of the surviving seeds. Maybe one can also philosophize it as the plant giving the critter a gift of tasty fruit in return for going and planting more of its kind. Everybody wins.
As for the manipulation of life forms, the razing of a pine forest and planting rows of apple trees and harvesting the apples later, seems to have messed with nature quite a bit. Also, sometimes a tree is partly grown, then cut off a few feet above the ground and spliced with the trunk and leaves of a different kind of tree, to provide a hardiness. Isn't that also messing with nature? When one bites into an apple and crushes it with the teeth and munches it down, the apple gets really mangled ... is that not messing with it?
So if one were to figure out how to take a bit of apple fruit cells, stem, leaf material (maybe from the parts that were headed into the garbage can and landfill) and getting them all to grow in a more efficient conversion process from sunlight into biofuel, it seems not much different philosophically.
However, plants and animals that get domesticated by civilization, tend to flourish, but other kinds of creatures get crushed out of the way, lost. So if apple fruit material could be grown in sheets for biofuels, it might also then get cookie-cuttered into neat efficient packages for sale instead of apples, and then apples themselves might cease to be tended in orchards.
Such changes need to be responsibly orchestrated into the bigger picture; which unfortunately is rarely done nowadays since "there is no money in it." Only in the long term, big picture, are such things visible as being very economically wise. Growing small apple orchards, or apple trees as part of a forested landscape of diversity in a responsibly tended way, might become a part of civilization's solid progress. Same philosophy for all other kinds of fruit trees ... and other food sources.
OK I can't resist flapping away more with this, and so visualizing growing a tree whose trunk is in the size and shape of a 2 x 4 stud 8 feet long at harvest. No huge logger trucks or sawmill needed. And I recall when I was a boy, fantasizing growing houses by planting and tending various kinds of trees and vines etc to grow into the frame and walls and roof of a house. One could start on a plot of land and start growing such houses; when the first one was adequately grown, install remainder of plumbing, electricity, and move in, live there while tending houses nearby similarly, producing houses year after year for sale, a type of farming. I have it mentioned somewhere on one of my web pages probably one of my old earthlink.net/~jedcline pages, since several years ago I got an email from someone in Hawaii who was building a full sized home supported by three - Banyan? - trees, had seen the page and was looking for ideas."
Friday, February 2, 2007
Global warming entertainment romance style
As the report on global climate change is released today, it seems appropriate to entertain a bit (including a bit of February romance) with a bit of some of my Science Fiction writings, "Novelway Prototype Shop" Chapters 1 & 2:
Chapter 1: Redwood Forests Remembering
The great redwood forests had memory of their past eons of greatness, and the mind of their collective beingness came to a decision: it is time to have the change. Their aura was so expansive that it had felt the entire planet's saga, now written into their essence.
And that aura felt how now the carbon-stored sunshine energy, so patiently and laboriously stashed away by countless plant beings ages ago, so as to enable an oxygen-based animal life to exist, was being poured back into the atmosphere faster than sea and land photosynthesis beings can re-absorb it. What was causing this? They felt deeper into it, seeking.
It was these new two-legged scrapy beings with their machines, who, like a mosquito on a bird's back, stuck a probe deep into the earth's mantle and drew up the fluid petrochemicals, then burned them back into the atmosphere, heedlessly. It was not for the carbon to build their clever machines out of; no, it was to pull out the stored past energy of the sun that was consumed to stash the carbon away from the atmosphere, so long ago, that life might wonderfully expand and prosper, based on oxidation power.
So the great redwood beings coalesced into their planetwide aura, a new pattern of thought channels for those scrappy knowledge-gathering beings and their machines so clever. Like the river channels, new thoughts would flow as time went on, engraving new patterns for their civilization which now squatted so heavily on the world of nature's vast life flow.
The misty morning fresh dawn cooly sifted down through the great redwood tree, its top so high the Pacific Ocean was in view, multitubular cluster strong long trunk, down to where its roots fingered along in the soil below it, tasting the moist chemistry for the building pieces for today's construction. The great tree sipped of the earth's dainty water and aired her limbs in a fresh breeze, then focused on the interesting pair of beings who had chosen to nestle between her roots and great branches overnight. The couple were snuggled peacefully in each others' arms, knowing in their dreams of the warmly loving dance of life, down there in their tent so tiny, a cold campfire nearby, and a metal car machine. The redwood tree resonated with that peaceful togetherness intertwined in love so quietly gentle resting, resonated like she had always resonated with all her spread family across the great land across time in oneness, spreading bole to bole, bonded family united in auric oneness knowing of beingness so detailed. She spread her part of the forest aura around to tuck in the loving couple a bit more, and waited with the patience of eternity for new things to happen. Yet this pair of cuddly beings, in the tent sandwiched between her awning branches and anchoring root field, were of the kind that had brought forth the metal machines that crawled around releasing the CO2's carbon, so as to utilize the energy of the sun that so long before had been stored so as to lock the excess carbon away from the air. And the metal machine they had brought, was it not one of them? Yes. So the redwood tree gently laid upon the dreamy couple, a holographic piece of the new auric pattern which the great forest had formed. The new auric pattern so softly and gently merged with that of the two sleeping beings, now one with them.
Chapter 2: Camping Aromas of Fresh Coffee
Aromas of fresh coffee and fried pancakes which Marsha was cooking on re-kindled campfire, wafted in along with cool breeze through the open tent flap, to awaken John to the day. What he been dreaming? Something about the car and air and trees, what was it? Like they were all dancing together with the people a new song; strange dream.
Marsha, too, admired the aroma and flavor of the fresh coffee, and as her eyes drank in the wondrous foliage of the forest around them, and especially the curiously interesting redwood tree over their head, its branches like a mother hen over her brood of chicks, protecting and comforting in instinctual responsibility.
Marsha sipped coffee more, noticing John was stirring in the tent. What was it about these nights with him, how the next day her usual no-nonsense, get it done right, avoid the unconventional, attitude changed to add a curiosity of "what would happen if...." John was certainly low-maintenance, all she had to do was be there for him; he seemed totally addicted to her. Yet a man of dreams was he, always off in the future, could hardly take care of himself in the real tough world. Why did he let people walk all over him, make him such a fool? No dummy, him. It was times like this morning that she actually considered taking the position at her Dad's prototype shop, be lead engineer in the R & D section that normally scared her with its demands to create things college never taught her to do. Intimacy with John somehow opened up some new part of herself so that the unconventional became an interesting adventure to make happen, there would be a way, and it would be fun. Instead of the usual irritation at the very thought of having to do something not by the book, what are those idiots going to ask for her to make happen next. She had done well in college, would go back for her masters degree in a few years; she knew every engineering principle that school could teach, and applied it well at her job, no question.
John wafted out of the tent along the path of the coffee aroma, receiving a cup of brew from her. These times with her brought a joy of belief that dreams will come true, the world is here to make them happen, when she was around him. And there was a new magic in the air here somehow, more than the usual forest fine air. Life is wonderful, keenly alive, when he was with her; all would turn out OK, he knew with certainty, like now."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The full Sci Fi story can be found at
http://www.escalatorhi.com/pages/topic3/novelwayprotoshop.html or
http://novelwayproto.blogspot.com/
and my earlier writing from which this is derivative, written in 1988 while the Iraq-Iran war was ongoing:
"Unfinished Transportation Story"
The great redwood tree forest remnants remembered their greatness, spreading from coast to coast, far North to far South. Their ancestors' carbon had been locked beneath the rocks for millions of years, buried in the form of coal and crude oil, locked away from use by the forests.
Animals had come to munch on leaves, that there may be room for more trees. Bigger animals with bigger teeth came to munch on the leaf eaters, that the forests would not become extinct. But the upheavals of the earth had buried the forest carbon. Now there were creatures that tapped into those hydrocarbon burials, and the creatures' engines spread the carbon into the atmosphere. Now there was about too much CO2 and the planet would become too hot unless there was time for the forests to spread again across the land. It was time.
The oil producing countries of the Mid-East gently gave the news to the western world. The Iranians, the Saudies, the Kuwaites, the Iraqians chose to change from the adventure of war to the adventure of rebuilding their desert lands into wondrous gardens of plenty. In three years from the announcement to the Western nations, no more crude oil would be exported. The decades during which they had saved up the hundreds of billions of dollars of US money from petroleum, would be used to buy solar cells from the US, and all else they would need to terraform their deserts. Their petrochemical subterranean stores would be used to supply their deserts with the necessary carbon to build forests of plenty. Biological engineering would start with lichens and oil-eating microbes would start, and eventually a thousand-year-old redwood forest would elate over what had been the Sahara Desert.
Three years, OPEC had told the Western world, during which the oil shipments would exponentially decrease to zero. It was time for this to happen, they said with wisdom.
In America, the few who wanted to go to war with the Mideast to rob them of their oil, were quickly brought to their senses. The US instead chose to cherish their Yankee Ingenuity, welcoming this need to responsibly recreate their transportation system. The Government chose to bring back the process that had brought about the early inventiveness of America, that of offering prizes to those who invented and built adequately innovative ways to make the commute system better than ever, and without the use of gasoline in cars. It was time for this to happen, they knew with wisdom.
Permit stickers required to park on the streets in some cities. Gridlock. Finite fossil fuel resources. America selling its land to foreign countries...46% of LA's best real estate already sold to foreign countries...to pay largely for transportation fuel and cars...we don't make anything they want to buy from us, so we sell our land. Surely wake-up-to-reality time for the U.S.. And now the loss of Mid-East fuel impending. It was time to do something about transportation.
Ground transportation. Evolving from the complex of automobiles, busses, trucks and motorcycles...toward what? A measure for transportation efficiency needs be developed, from transportating food around a kitchen while cooking to transporting concrete to a building site. Mostly transporting commuters between residence and worksite. Total brainstorming was invited on the problem by the federal government; to bypass the restrictions on individual inventing, the government offered to buy outright the company that employed the winning ideamaker...for twice the company's worth. Corporations eagerly switched from censoring employee rights to inventions, to eagerly urging them to think about transportation widgets.
They created a race. A child on a skateboard would compete with a bicyclist and a railroad train, based on sheer transportation efficiency geared for the daily work commute.Initially the bicycle won, long known for its outstanding transportation efficiency, and utilized massively in many countries. But the Los Angeles commute, where many workers casually commute 40 miles each way, the bicycle was too slow, and too messy on rainy days. A walk-amplifier was invented, analogous to carnival stilt walkers, except low to the street...ok on flatland, but also amplified to effort needed to go uphill. A massive increase in buses was tried, covering every street every day every 10 minutes...but the cost of running them empty was nearly as much as running them full of people, and coverage had to be 24 hours a day to cover all contingencies. Changing to vans in the wee hours helped some, but driver pay still had to be made. The advantage personal cars had had was that when no one wanted to go anywhere, there was no energy cost during that time. One city, which had an experimental high-tech communications system which had a computer link to every residence and workplace, eased the problem by asking that each commuter send a brief message telling of expected bus needs: starting what time, where going to, and how many people...the computer then adjusted the bus/van/taxi schedule according to the expected needs of the route at the time.
Electric lines for electric cars or buses exposed much too high voltage for safety, enough power to move every vehicle on the street...unsafe. And where would the electric power come from, anyway? Nuclear fusion powerplants still depended on great breakthroughs in technology; solar power satellites required building an industrial support system for utilizing Lunar materials for construction. Much creativity was found in creating human powered transportation systems, such as pedal-powered mini-monorail cars.But when someone failed to be able to pedal, then the monorail stopped until that vehicle could be gotten off the track. A tow cable system was tried, which started with a simple tow cable continually going around each block, and one grabbed onto the cable while on roller skates or whatever wheels, and towed down the street, then crossed the street to grab onto the next block's tow cable. The tow cable ran constantly, powered by salvaged automobile engines with speed governers that adjusted for the daily varying commuter load. Wearing daypacks or backpacks for lunch and packages became popular everywhere. As the tow cable system became more in use, ultralight wheeled enclosed vehicles were created to provide some weather protection, and mechanical cable grippers became programmable to shift at block cable intersections automatically routing through the city without thought. The cables were replaced by steel bands for higher efficiency and less stretch. Then a system of higher speed tow bands around each block were built...extending further into the old roadways as speed went up, so that when routing long distances, one could shift from slow tows to ever faster tows until approaching destination, then reversing the process. The tow bands were powered by whatever was available locally, coal-fired engines, hydropower or whatever could turn something around fast enough. Then the tow bands were run through enclosed tubeways, to shield from the weather and to allow the airflow to move along with the vehicles, cutting drastically down on wind resistance. On long intercity tubeways, air was pumped into the traffic, boosting the speed; the air was forced under the lightweight vehicles enabling them to airsled along the tubeway on air bearings. Inside the tubeways, speeds went up and up, unaffected by the space outside the tubes; tow-air-sledding through the tubes at hundreds of miles per hour were unnoticeable by the occupants. (JEDCline 88I11)
Copyright © 1995 James Edward David Cline
Chapter 1: Redwood Forests Remembering
The great redwood forests had memory of their past eons of greatness, and the mind of their collective beingness came to a decision: it is time to have the change. Their aura was so expansive that it had felt the entire planet's saga, now written into their essence.
And that aura felt how now the carbon-stored sunshine energy, so patiently and laboriously stashed away by countless plant beings ages ago, so as to enable an oxygen-based animal life to exist, was being poured back into the atmosphere faster than sea and land photosynthesis beings can re-absorb it. What was causing this? They felt deeper into it, seeking.
It was these new two-legged scrapy beings with their machines, who, like a mosquito on a bird's back, stuck a probe deep into the earth's mantle and drew up the fluid petrochemicals, then burned them back into the atmosphere, heedlessly. It was not for the carbon to build their clever machines out of; no, it was to pull out the stored past energy of the sun that was consumed to stash the carbon away from the atmosphere, so long ago, that life might wonderfully expand and prosper, based on oxidation power.
So the great redwood beings coalesced into their planetwide aura, a new pattern of thought channels for those scrappy knowledge-gathering beings and their machines so clever. Like the river channels, new thoughts would flow as time went on, engraving new patterns for their civilization which now squatted so heavily on the world of nature's vast life flow.
The misty morning fresh dawn cooly sifted down through the great redwood tree, its top so high the Pacific Ocean was in view, multitubular cluster strong long trunk, down to where its roots fingered along in the soil below it, tasting the moist chemistry for the building pieces for today's construction. The great tree sipped of the earth's dainty water and aired her limbs in a fresh breeze, then focused on the interesting pair of beings who had chosen to nestle between her roots and great branches overnight. The couple were snuggled peacefully in each others' arms, knowing in their dreams of the warmly loving dance of life, down there in their tent so tiny, a cold campfire nearby, and a metal car machine. The redwood tree resonated with that peaceful togetherness intertwined in love so quietly gentle resting, resonated like she had always resonated with all her spread family across the great land across time in oneness, spreading bole to bole, bonded family united in auric oneness knowing of beingness so detailed. She spread her part of the forest aura around to tuck in the loving couple a bit more, and waited with the patience of eternity for new things to happen. Yet this pair of cuddly beings, in the tent sandwiched between her awning branches and anchoring root field, were of the kind that had brought forth the metal machines that crawled around releasing the CO2's carbon, so as to utilize the energy of the sun that so long before had been stored so as to lock the excess carbon away from the air. And the metal machine they had brought, was it not one of them? Yes. So the redwood tree gently laid upon the dreamy couple, a holographic piece of the new auric pattern which the great forest had formed. The new auric pattern so softly and gently merged with that of the two sleeping beings, now one with them.
Chapter 2: Camping Aromas of Fresh Coffee
Aromas of fresh coffee and fried pancakes which Marsha was cooking on re-kindled campfire, wafted in along with cool breeze through the open tent flap, to awaken John to the day. What he been dreaming? Something about the car and air and trees, what was it? Like they were all dancing together with the people a new song; strange dream.
Marsha, too, admired the aroma and flavor of the fresh coffee, and as her eyes drank in the wondrous foliage of the forest around them, and especially the curiously interesting redwood tree over their head, its branches like a mother hen over her brood of chicks, protecting and comforting in instinctual responsibility.
Marsha sipped coffee more, noticing John was stirring in the tent. What was it about these nights with him, how the next day her usual no-nonsense, get it done right, avoid the unconventional, attitude changed to add a curiosity of "what would happen if...." John was certainly low-maintenance, all she had to do was be there for him; he seemed totally addicted to her. Yet a man of dreams was he, always off in the future, could hardly take care of himself in the real tough world. Why did he let people walk all over him, make him such a fool? No dummy, him. It was times like this morning that she actually considered taking the position at her Dad's prototype shop, be lead engineer in the R & D section that normally scared her with its demands to create things college never taught her to do. Intimacy with John somehow opened up some new part of herself so that the unconventional became an interesting adventure to make happen, there would be a way, and it would be fun. Instead of the usual irritation at the very thought of having to do something not by the book, what are those idiots going to ask for her to make happen next. She had done well in college, would go back for her masters degree in a few years; she knew every engineering principle that school could teach, and applied it well at her job, no question.
John wafted out of the tent along the path of the coffee aroma, receiving a cup of brew from her. These times with her brought a joy of belief that dreams will come true, the world is here to make them happen, when she was around him. And there was a new magic in the air here somehow, more than the usual forest fine air. Life is wonderful, keenly alive, when he was with her; all would turn out OK, he knew with certainty, like now."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The full Sci Fi story can be found at
http://www.escalatorhi.com/pages/topic3/novelwayprotoshop.html or
http://novelwayproto.blogspot.com/
and my earlier writing from which this is derivative, written in 1988 while the Iraq-Iran war was ongoing:
"Unfinished Transportation Story"
The great redwood tree forest remnants remembered their greatness, spreading from coast to coast, far North to far South. Their ancestors' carbon had been locked beneath the rocks for millions of years, buried in the form of coal and crude oil, locked away from use by the forests.
Animals had come to munch on leaves, that there may be room for more trees. Bigger animals with bigger teeth came to munch on the leaf eaters, that the forests would not become extinct. But the upheavals of the earth had buried the forest carbon. Now there were creatures that tapped into those hydrocarbon burials, and the creatures' engines spread the carbon into the atmosphere. Now there was about too much CO2 and the planet would become too hot unless there was time for the forests to spread again across the land. It was time.
The oil producing countries of the Mid-East gently gave the news to the western world. The Iranians, the Saudies, the Kuwaites, the Iraqians chose to change from the adventure of war to the adventure of rebuilding their desert lands into wondrous gardens of plenty. In three years from the announcement to the Western nations, no more crude oil would be exported. The decades during which they had saved up the hundreds of billions of dollars of US money from petroleum, would be used to buy solar cells from the US, and all else they would need to terraform their deserts. Their petrochemical subterranean stores would be used to supply their deserts with the necessary carbon to build forests of plenty. Biological engineering would start with lichens and oil-eating microbes would start, and eventually a thousand-year-old redwood forest would elate over what had been the Sahara Desert.
Three years, OPEC had told the Western world, during which the oil shipments would exponentially decrease to zero. It was time for this to happen, they said with wisdom.
In America, the few who wanted to go to war with the Mideast to rob them of their oil, were quickly brought to their senses. The US instead chose to cherish their Yankee Ingenuity, welcoming this need to responsibly recreate their transportation system. The Government chose to bring back the process that had brought about the early inventiveness of America, that of offering prizes to those who invented and built adequately innovative ways to make the commute system better than ever, and without the use of gasoline in cars. It was time for this to happen, they knew with wisdom.
Permit stickers required to park on the streets in some cities. Gridlock. Finite fossil fuel resources. America selling its land to foreign countries...46% of LA's best real estate already sold to foreign countries...to pay largely for transportation fuel and cars...we don't make anything they want to buy from us, so we sell our land. Surely wake-up-to-reality time for the U.S.. And now the loss of Mid-East fuel impending. It was time to do something about transportation.
Ground transportation. Evolving from the complex of automobiles, busses, trucks and motorcycles...toward what? A measure for transportation efficiency needs be developed, from transportating food around a kitchen while cooking to transporting concrete to a building site. Mostly transporting commuters between residence and worksite. Total brainstorming was invited on the problem by the federal government; to bypass the restrictions on individual inventing, the government offered to buy outright the company that employed the winning ideamaker...for twice the company's worth. Corporations eagerly switched from censoring employee rights to inventions, to eagerly urging them to think about transportation widgets.
They created a race. A child on a skateboard would compete with a bicyclist and a railroad train, based on sheer transportation efficiency geared for the daily work commute.Initially the bicycle won, long known for its outstanding transportation efficiency, and utilized massively in many countries. But the Los Angeles commute, where many workers casually commute 40 miles each way, the bicycle was too slow, and too messy on rainy days. A walk-amplifier was invented, analogous to carnival stilt walkers, except low to the street...ok on flatland, but also amplified to effort needed to go uphill. A massive increase in buses was tried, covering every street every day every 10 minutes...but the cost of running them empty was nearly as much as running them full of people, and coverage had to be 24 hours a day to cover all contingencies. Changing to vans in the wee hours helped some, but driver pay still had to be made. The advantage personal cars had had was that when no one wanted to go anywhere, there was no energy cost during that time. One city, which had an experimental high-tech communications system which had a computer link to every residence and workplace, eased the problem by asking that each commuter send a brief message telling of expected bus needs: starting what time, where going to, and how many people...the computer then adjusted the bus/van/taxi schedule according to the expected needs of the route at the time.
Electric lines for electric cars or buses exposed much too high voltage for safety, enough power to move every vehicle on the street...unsafe. And where would the electric power come from, anyway? Nuclear fusion powerplants still depended on great breakthroughs in technology; solar power satellites required building an industrial support system for utilizing Lunar materials for construction. Much creativity was found in creating human powered transportation systems, such as pedal-powered mini-monorail cars.But when someone failed to be able to pedal, then the monorail stopped until that vehicle could be gotten off the track. A tow cable system was tried, which started with a simple tow cable continually going around each block, and one grabbed onto the cable while on roller skates or whatever wheels, and towed down the street, then crossed the street to grab onto the next block's tow cable. The tow cable ran constantly, powered by salvaged automobile engines with speed governers that adjusted for the daily varying commuter load. Wearing daypacks or backpacks for lunch and packages became popular everywhere. As the tow cable system became more in use, ultralight wheeled enclosed vehicles were created to provide some weather protection, and mechanical cable grippers became programmable to shift at block cable intersections automatically routing through the city without thought. The cables were replaced by steel bands for higher efficiency and less stretch. Then a system of higher speed tow bands around each block were built...extending further into the old roadways as speed went up, so that when routing long distances, one could shift from slow tows to ever faster tows until approaching destination, then reversing the process. The tow bands were powered by whatever was available locally, coal-fired engines, hydropower or whatever could turn something around fast enough. Then the tow bands were run through enclosed tubeways, to shield from the weather and to allow the airflow to move along with the vehicles, cutting drastically down on wind resistance. On long intercity tubeways, air was pumped into the traffic, boosting the speed; the air was forced under the lightweight vehicles enabling them to airsled along the tubeway on air bearings. Inside the tubeways, speeds went up and up, unaffected by the space outside the tubes; tow-air-sledding through the tubes at hundreds of miles per hour were unnoticeable by the occupants. (JEDCline 88I11)
Copyright © 1995 James Edward David Cline
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Example of my energy-related SciFi writings
(Note: this is an example of my Science Fiction adventure writings involving peoples' struggles to cope with various energy crisis. The novel from which it is extracted, "Building Up" by J E D Cline, includes many energy coping references, as do my other Science Fiction writings which are available in my various blogs.)
Day 29 of 30 (November, 2006)
The construction and use of the space access structure was energy starved. As there were no electric power lines existing servicing Cayanbe, the Ecuadoreans pitched in and got a powdered-coal fueled electric power plant brought in to the construction site, and while that fuel supply lasted, they could speed up the scaling up construction of the structure. At some point they would need to shift to using energy resources for lifting materials up to GEO to build a Satellite Solar electric Power plant, with which to power the transportation structure thereafter.
The supplies available to fuel the coal-powered electric power plant were rationed and getting less each week. So when the diameter of the KESTS structure to GEO reached 36 cm, they called a temporary halt to the scaling up process. At this point the mass of the structure was 4E10kg, and the structure was capable of receiving 600 megawatts per hour while lifting 20 million kg of mass to GEO each hour, so it was extremely underused, being only powered by the small powerplant on site. And that powerplant was running out of allowed fuel ration, too. They had to get to building the solar electric powerplant built in GEO as soon as possible.
They had instructed the old dual wheel space station to be towed to where it could continually beam microwave energy to rectennas to either the White Sands location, or to the Cayanbe location. They arranged to time share the energy beamed down from its solar power source, a kind of SSPS, but welcome addition to the petrochemical powerplant. They used the energy primarily to lift the construction materials for a SSPS capable of delivering 600 MW of solar-sourced energy continuously to the earth surface, If they could achieve that before their earth sourced energy supplies ran out, they could at least run this KESTS at full capacity, building more solar electric powerplants, and start negotiating with countries for delivered electric power, and start having an income. From then on, things would be easier.
As it was, the combined energy input from the coal-fired electric power and their average share of the space station's beamed energy was only half a megawatt, with which they could only deliver 15,000 kg to GEO each hour. They chose to build the main structure of the powerplant out of glass cast in a hard vacuum, which had enormous strength to mass ratio, far greater than the finest steel or aluminum, so long as it could be kept free of the atmosphere's molecules wiggling into glass surface microcracks, wedging into the glass until it was as fragile as it is normally on the earth's surface. They chose to melt the glass down at the KESTS ground terminal, and haul it up to the GEO construction site while still in the melted state, for feeding the extrusion facilities making the SSPS.
The structure had severe limits to the amount of concentrated load it could carry, however. It was very efficient at lifting a fairly continuous series of payloads of about equal mass, but the limits to concentrated mass load meant that they could not just haul up a solar powerplant ready-made. So Improy and Catalie went up in their little two-person spacecraft again, this time being lifted up by the KESTS, about its limit of a concentrated mass load. They only had a brief time they could work in GEO, being without passive radiation protection, and the injected DNA repair substance formula had long since been lost. So they used their space worksuits to assemble the solar-electric power panels into the glass main structure, and connected it to the microwave beam generator.
Looking down from the construction site, in GEO above the opposite side of the planet from the Ecuadorean mountain tunnel site, the world looked mostly watery. They were out of touch with ground facilities, and they dare not try to link into any internet signals that might reach up here. They then set up the silicon solar cell automated fabrication plant, which liked to be in zero g and hard vacuum, solar powered. Then they hurried back down the KESTS back to Cayambe peak tunnel, for a well earned vacation.
Copyright © 2006 James E D Cline as per Blogger.com rules
(Note: this energy related post was copied over from one of my other blogs, and can be found at
http://jedc2006nanowrimo.blogspot.com/2006/11/day-29-of-30.html
JEDCline.)
Day 29 of 30 (November, 2006)
The construction and use of the space access structure was energy starved. As there were no electric power lines existing servicing Cayanbe, the Ecuadoreans pitched in and got a powdered-coal fueled electric power plant brought in to the construction site, and while that fuel supply lasted, they could speed up the scaling up construction of the structure. At some point they would need to shift to using energy resources for lifting materials up to GEO to build a Satellite Solar electric Power plant, with which to power the transportation structure thereafter.
The supplies available to fuel the coal-powered electric power plant were rationed and getting less each week. So when the diameter of the KESTS structure to GEO reached 36 cm, they called a temporary halt to the scaling up process. At this point the mass of the structure was 4E10kg, and the structure was capable of receiving 600 megawatts per hour while lifting 20 million kg of mass to GEO each hour, so it was extremely underused, being only powered by the small powerplant on site. And that powerplant was running out of allowed fuel ration, too. They had to get to building the solar electric powerplant built in GEO as soon as possible.
They had instructed the old dual wheel space station to be towed to where it could continually beam microwave energy to rectennas to either the White Sands location, or to the Cayanbe location. They arranged to time share the energy beamed down from its solar power source, a kind of SSPS, but welcome addition to the petrochemical powerplant. They used the energy primarily to lift the construction materials for a SSPS capable of delivering 600 MW of solar-sourced energy continuously to the earth surface, If they could achieve that before their earth sourced energy supplies ran out, they could at least run this KESTS at full capacity, building more solar electric powerplants, and start negotiating with countries for delivered electric power, and start having an income. From then on, things would be easier.
As it was, the combined energy input from the coal-fired electric power and their average share of the space station's beamed energy was only half a megawatt, with which they could only deliver 15,000 kg to GEO each hour. They chose to build the main structure of the powerplant out of glass cast in a hard vacuum, which had enormous strength to mass ratio, far greater than the finest steel or aluminum, so long as it could be kept free of the atmosphere's molecules wiggling into glass surface microcracks, wedging into the glass until it was as fragile as it is normally on the earth's surface. They chose to melt the glass down at the KESTS ground terminal, and haul it up to the GEO construction site while still in the melted state, for feeding the extrusion facilities making the SSPS.
The structure had severe limits to the amount of concentrated load it could carry, however. It was very efficient at lifting a fairly continuous series of payloads of about equal mass, but the limits to concentrated mass load meant that they could not just haul up a solar powerplant ready-made. So Improy and Catalie went up in their little two-person spacecraft again, this time being lifted up by the KESTS, about its limit of a concentrated mass load. They only had a brief time they could work in GEO, being without passive radiation protection, and the injected DNA repair substance formula had long since been lost. So they used their space worksuits to assemble the solar-electric power panels into the glass main structure, and connected it to the microwave beam generator.
Looking down from the construction site, in GEO above the opposite side of the planet from the Ecuadorean mountain tunnel site, the world looked mostly watery. They were out of touch with ground facilities, and they dare not try to link into any internet signals that might reach up here. They then set up the silicon solar cell automated fabrication plant, which liked to be in zero g and hard vacuum, solar powered. Then they hurried back down the KESTS back to Cayambe peak tunnel, for a well earned vacation.
Copyright © 2006 James E D Cline as per Blogger.com rules
(Note: this energy related post was copied over from one of my other blogs, and can be found at
http://jedc2006nanowrimo.blogspot.com/2006/11/day-29-of-30.html
JEDCline.)
Magnetic Footprints
(Note: this post is an example of how energy flow in a machine can be described using the evocative communication possible in poetry. Although it was originally written for appreciation by fellow disk drive engineers in the field of rotating disk magnetic memory systems, other people have found it interesting, too, so is included in this blog.)
20040715 the poem, Magnetic Footprints
JEDC's Technological Poetry
MAGNETIC FOOTPRINTS
by James Edward David Cline
Here is a poem written about the inner workings of a disk drive, written using the INSCRIBE cognitive engine.
by J E D CLINE 6/13/84
Shining like a mechanical jewel
The tortured metal and plastic shapes
Were bound unwillingly together
By man and machine. And now, the
Conscripted shapes silently await,
Like a statue frozen, the
Awakening pulse of electric life
To throb in it's copper veins,
Energizing mechanical muscles....
Then, TURN-ON!
A twirling whirl goes to a filmy disk
Of micromagnets, sending them hurtling
Past a special place: a read/write head
With magnetic maw that sometimes
Shouts and sometimes listens
To the concensus of the
Scurrying horde of magnetic domains.
The gaping maw jumps back and forth,
Then lies in wait for the call of
The one it seeks.
Here they come! The earthquake rattle
Of ten thousand dancing domains in a
Chorus line, all spread their energy
To the hungry ferrite eye, then take it
Back again, escaping.
Their rock-and-roll dance is
Patiently watched over,
Then finally the familiar notes
Of the sought sector comes on scene.
The throbbing beat is announced,
And its repeating rhythm forms a
Trellis of time supporting the
Melodious string of data notes.
Stronger now and square, the
Marching line of ones and zeros
Triumphantly emerge as information,
Reborn to live in the halls of
Mankind's busyness.
But there comes a time in the life of bits,
When the world tires of them, and
Prepares to send their progenitive essence
To ferrite crypts. The chosen ones, the
Lucky bits, herd into groups, then file
Courageously singley into the iron maiden.
The ferrite's searching eye,
Having found the assigned shelf
In the filmy store, grabs each
Brave bit in turn, transforming
It in an instant into a torrent
Of current, rushing first one way
Then the other. This river of
Excitement pours through copper swirls,
And their waves of motion stir concerted
Flux in flying ferrite glider.
The flux strikes a barrier!
A gap to be crossed in an
Exhuberant flurry and shout,
And leaves magnetic footprints by
Overturnings in the domains below,
In the filmy land of time's sleep.
Copyright © 1995 James Edward David Cline
(Note: this post was copied over from one of my other blogs. J E D Cline.)
20040715 the poem, Magnetic Footprints
JEDC's Technological Poetry
MAGNETIC FOOTPRINTS
by James Edward David Cline
Here is a poem written about the inner workings of a disk drive, written using the INSCRIBE cognitive engine.
by J E D CLINE 6/13/84
Shining like a mechanical jewel
The tortured metal and plastic shapes
Were bound unwillingly together
By man and machine. And now, the
Conscripted shapes silently await,
Like a statue frozen, the
Awakening pulse of electric life
To throb in it's copper veins,
Energizing mechanical muscles....
Then, TURN-ON!
A twirling whirl goes to a filmy disk
Of micromagnets, sending them hurtling
Past a special place: a read/write head
With magnetic maw that sometimes
Shouts and sometimes listens
To the concensus of the
Scurrying horde of magnetic domains.
The gaping maw jumps back and forth,
Then lies in wait for the call of
The one it seeks.
Here they come! The earthquake rattle
Of ten thousand dancing domains in a
Chorus line, all spread their energy
To the hungry ferrite eye, then take it
Back again, escaping.
Their rock-and-roll dance is
Patiently watched over,
Then finally the familiar notes
Of the sought sector comes on scene.
The throbbing beat is announced,
And its repeating rhythm forms a
Trellis of time supporting the
Melodious string of data notes.
Stronger now and square, the
Marching line of ones and zeros
Triumphantly emerge as information,
Reborn to live in the halls of
Mankind's busyness.
But there comes a time in the life of bits,
When the world tires of them, and
Prepares to send their progenitive essence
To ferrite crypts. The chosen ones, the
Lucky bits, herd into groups, then file
Courageously singley into the iron maiden.
The ferrite's searching eye,
Having found the assigned shelf
In the filmy store, grabs each
Brave bit in turn, transforming
It in an instant into a torrent
Of current, rushing first one way
Then the other. This river of
Excitement pours through copper swirls,
And their waves of motion stir concerted
Flux in flying ferrite glider.
The flux strikes a barrier!
A gap to be crossed in an
Exhuberant flurry and shout,
And leaves magnetic footprints by
Overturnings in the domains below,
In the filmy land of time's sleep.
Copyright © 1995 James Edward David Cline
(Note: this post was copied over from one of my other blogs. J E D Cline.)
Incoming Idea, watch out!
(Although this is not especially related to energy ideas, it intensely relates to ideas in general.)
Incoming Idea, watch out!
In this quatrillion-piece machine we call "Civilization", the click and buzz and slosh back and forth of rhythms play out, business as usual. It was not always this way; the pieces of civilization started from zero; more and more added piece by piece, until it is huge and complex as now.
Civilization grew, idea by idea, and the ideas worked the hand of mankind upon stone and wood and water and on living things, ever growing, idea by idea. Each incoming idea fell upon the ongoing waves and ripples in existing civilization as it found, each fell sometimes like a cool raindrop onto a thirsty leaf, others fell like a fiery meteor from outer space. Whatever, the impact of the new idea made new waves, new ripples, at first upsetting, then settling in to the new norm of everyday slosh.
The process of adding to civilization continues, building it up more as before. But each new idea that plops into the slurry of busy civilization is not often welcome, disruptive to the routine that was before. Some people decide to defend against new ideas that might be headed their way, instead of needing to cope with the disruption and new norm that might have resulted. Depending on just where the incoming new idea plunks into, here are some of the observed forms of blocking waves spreading from the plopped idea, cutting the idea off at the source (sorry, if any of this steps on some toes a little):
1) Ideas make new things possible, resulting in change, and thus they must be suppressed/controlled to keep all things fine just like they are right now. If I own a corporation, I can specify what ideas can be worked on, none else permitted on the job. If I additionally require each employee to sign an "employment agreement" handing over all ideas the employee ever has (on or off the job and on any subject) to me, and yet requiring me to do nothing with them, I can deep-six all those other ideas all those employees might have. Since nearly everyone must work for some corporation to pay bills, and if all corporations do this same idea suppression thing, there will be no new ideas created except which those we owners choose, and all will be in our plushly rewarded fuedal domain control forever.
2) Only very highly educated people are capable of creating useable wide-implication new conceptual designs, and are well rewarded for that capability. Therefore, someone not highly degreed but still claiming to create such concepts, must be lying, or else the idea is defective and won't work. In either case, ignore the person that is out of line, he/she will starve eventually and vanish as if never existed if unrewarded thoroughly enough; the idea will then freely be for all of us to use as we see fit, part of the knowledge base of our education, our right to high position, and thus all will remain well.
3) An idea for a radically new kind of space access transportation and application conceivably could have military uses, therefore the idea surely is classified and the guy telling of it must be a spy. Therefore correct response would be to stifle the guy's efforts to communicate the idea (since it obviously must have been classified), constantly block the guy's efforts at everything and particularly don't let people intimately talk with him such as a girlfriend might do; and conduct a widely advertised search to locate the security leak source where that spy stole the idea, shake things up and let them know who is boss.
4) My business's income is my source of survival and high living. The conduct of business generally is as clean and merciless as the rules of football game playing; and so my survival requires I too be equally and cooly merciless toward anything which might compete with my business. Therefore, someone coming in with a better idea than that idea upon which my business is founded, must be mercilessly and coldly treated, quietly grabbing or destroying that other idea and its originator, so my business and life will remain fine.
5) In school I did not care who originally came up with each of the bits of knowledge which I learned there; I got the knowledge and it all is mine to use to get what I need. Therefore, equally I don't care who comes up with a "new" idea, a bit of knowledge, it is mine to use freely to do what I want, nothing whatever owed to the "originator" of that so-called new item. Anyway, ideas just come out of thin air, thus they are of no value.
6) If someone below my hierarchical status does something "better than" me even once, my boss may fire me and give the job to that wiseguy underling. Therefore, if an underling proclaims a clearly better idea than I do, the purpose is to humiliate me; response therefore is to fight back at the underling, keep my position by destroying the idea or insinuating it was mine all along. Everyone knows the hierarchical system must be honored totally, one break in the structure and all will be at risk.
Civilization grew, idea by idea, and the ideas worked the hand of mankind upon stone and wood and water and on living things, ever growing, idea by idea. Yet it is said that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Given knowledge of how to most voraciously devour the resources of our home planet, excreting the materials as unusable entropied wastes, are there none to be found responsible enough? While we yet have the energy to create the radical electrically powered space access systems to enable us to reach for vast solar power far above the atmosphere and above earth's shadow, up where the entropied wastes of civilization can be totally recycled back to newness using solar power, hard vacuum, and zero-g up there in GEO orbit, instead we persist in smug power games to show who is better than who. Is the hand of man on the stone now chiseling the epitaph on mankind's tombstone, the human experiment gone run amuck; and the mad race to "win" be run in the tracks of the Lemmings? Ah, I trust in the hand of the Creator on the hand of Man.
(Note: this post is copied over from one of my other blogs. JEDCline)
Incoming Idea, watch out!
In this quatrillion-piece machine we call "Civilization", the click and buzz and slosh back and forth of rhythms play out, business as usual. It was not always this way; the pieces of civilization started from zero; more and more added piece by piece, until it is huge and complex as now.
Civilization grew, idea by idea, and the ideas worked the hand of mankind upon stone and wood and water and on living things, ever growing, idea by idea. Each incoming idea fell upon the ongoing waves and ripples in existing civilization as it found, each fell sometimes like a cool raindrop onto a thirsty leaf, others fell like a fiery meteor from outer space. Whatever, the impact of the new idea made new waves, new ripples, at first upsetting, then settling in to the new norm of everyday slosh.
The process of adding to civilization continues, building it up more as before. But each new idea that plops into the slurry of busy civilization is not often welcome, disruptive to the routine that was before. Some people decide to defend against new ideas that might be headed their way, instead of needing to cope with the disruption and new norm that might have resulted. Depending on just where the incoming new idea plunks into, here are some of the observed forms of blocking waves spreading from the plopped idea, cutting the idea off at the source (sorry, if any of this steps on some toes a little):
1) Ideas make new things possible, resulting in change, and thus they must be suppressed/controlled to keep all things fine just like they are right now. If I own a corporation, I can specify what ideas can be worked on, none else permitted on the job. If I additionally require each employee to sign an "employment agreement" handing over all ideas the employee ever has (on or off the job and on any subject) to me, and yet requiring me to do nothing with them, I can deep-six all those other ideas all those employees might have. Since nearly everyone must work for some corporation to pay bills, and if all corporations do this same idea suppression thing, there will be no new ideas created except which those we owners choose, and all will be in our plushly rewarded fuedal domain control forever.
2) Only very highly educated people are capable of creating useable wide-implication new conceptual designs, and are well rewarded for that capability. Therefore, someone not highly degreed but still claiming to create such concepts, must be lying, or else the idea is defective and won't work. In either case, ignore the person that is out of line, he/she will starve eventually and vanish as if never existed if unrewarded thoroughly enough; the idea will then freely be for all of us to use as we see fit, part of the knowledge base of our education, our right to high position, and thus all will remain well.
3) An idea for a radically new kind of space access transportation and application conceivably could have military uses, therefore the idea surely is classified and the guy telling of it must be a spy. Therefore correct response would be to stifle the guy's efforts to communicate the idea (since it obviously must have been classified), constantly block the guy's efforts at everything and particularly don't let people intimately talk with him such as a girlfriend might do; and conduct a widely advertised search to locate the security leak source where that spy stole the idea, shake things up and let them know who is boss.
4) My business's income is my source of survival and high living. The conduct of business generally is as clean and merciless as the rules of football game playing; and so my survival requires I too be equally and cooly merciless toward anything which might compete with my business. Therefore, someone coming in with a better idea than that idea upon which my business is founded, must be mercilessly and coldly treated, quietly grabbing or destroying that other idea and its originator, so my business and life will remain fine.
5) In school I did not care who originally came up with each of the bits of knowledge which I learned there; I got the knowledge and it all is mine to use to get what I need. Therefore, equally I don't care who comes up with a "new" idea, a bit of knowledge, it is mine to use freely to do what I want, nothing whatever owed to the "originator" of that so-called new item. Anyway, ideas just come out of thin air, thus they are of no value.
6) If someone below my hierarchical status does something "better than" me even once, my boss may fire me and give the job to that wiseguy underling. Therefore, if an underling proclaims a clearly better idea than I do, the purpose is to humiliate me; response therefore is to fight back at the underling, keep my position by destroying the idea or insinuating it was mine all along. Everyone knows the hierarchical system must be honored totally, one break in the structure and all will be at risk.
Civilization grew, idea by idea, and the ideas worked the hand of mankind upon stone and wood and water and on living things, ever growing, idea by idea. Yet it is said that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Given knowledge of how to most voraciously devour the resources of our home planet, excreting the materials as unusable entropied wastes, are there none to be found responsible enough? While we yet have the energy to create the radical electrically powered space access systems to enable us to reach for vast solar power far above the atmosphere and above earth's shadow, up where the entropied wastes of civilization can be totally recycled back to newness using solar power, hard vacuum, and zero-g up there in GEO orbit, instead we persist in smug power games to show who is better than who. Is the hand of man on the stone now chiseling the epitaph on mankind's tombstone, the human experiment gone run amuck; and the mad race to "win" be run in the tracks of the Lemmings? Ah, I trust in the hand of the Creator on the hand of Man.
(Note: this post is copied over from one of my other blogs. JEDCline)
Including energy management in an overview
Overview
20050724 J E D Cline
As the less noble of humanity’s ways continue to smokescreen my most cherished project, the exploration and utilization of the KESTS to GEO potentials, examination of the relevant trends is prudent now. The near and more distant future quality of life seems to hinge on energy resources and re-use of materials resources, although sociopolitical power plays are likely to continue to disrupt it heavily, as usual.
Applying some wisdom to it all, it seems to me that humanity still has choices regarding their energy future potentials. Fossil fuels plentifulness is on the way out, clearly, and to what level its “greenhouse warming effect" will have on Earth’s ecosystem before it starts receding, is unclear to me. Alternatives can go the “high road or the low road”, some in-between paths more likely too. Hydroelectric sources and some wind sources can provide a baseline energy supply until their machinery made using cheap fossil fuel energy and materials, starts wearing out. Growing sugarcane and corn for making ethanol for liquid storeable fuel, and conversion of cars to run on it, can provide some baseline for truck and automobile use to some extent. Nuclear electric power is likely to be expanded again, the desperation from depletion of conventional power sources outweighing worries regarding the extremely long term toxic effects of radioactive wastes thereby produced, and how to cope with those materials. Tree material can be grown to provide both storable combustible fuel as well as construction lumber.
Recycling seems next on the list critical field, and needs to go far beyond the saving of aluminum cans, bottles and newspapers for collection. Recycling takes energy, which also is getting scarce. So, wise and responsible means need to be applied on a wide scale.
Land and Real Estate usage no doubt will continue to be the arena of those who play territorial monopoly-type games of many kinds, easy money, sweet racket: price rises rapidly with no equivalent improvement in the item.
Continuing to fail to utilize the nation’s human resources to the fullest, is likely to result in declaring “overpopulation”, thus excuse for widespread loss of life, from the birth control (including abstention techniques), illness and warfare.
The reality-testing of economical products of small and large business' narrow interests needs to be balanced with some kind of overall perspective humanity- responsible functions. The lofty principle that "if there is a real need, someone will start a business to provide it" has not been working in the real world of business, mostly corporate-interest-controlled. The overall map needs to be available to all who contribute to the business picture, to have a chance of assuring there are not big gaps in the map.
Increasing communication potentials of the Internet and computers may make a voting process that provides much of the decision making function instead of entirely government responsibility, for the overall vision’s creation and filling in of that which makes it all work together.
Insofar as we continue to not use the total human capacity, and focus on strife internal and external, distraction from the responsibility to provide the above-mentioned life needs, may become so serious that major collapse and loss of life will occur, as so cycles of the past history teaches. The KESTS to GEO conceptual design offered the alternatives of a “high road” to follow, which I’d like to think we can still attain, despite the choice so far by the powers-that-be taken choices of strife and maintain status quo of recent years that has cost the nation the finances needed to built KESTS to GEO at its finest. Bewailing the what-could-have-been may be cathartic, but otherwise ia a waste of time beyond teaching lessons about humanity’s reality at the present time. The classical cravings to maintain power-as-is will no doubt continue to dominate what opportunities actually get to happen; those who suggest other possible ways deemed irresponsible or crazy, by those of temperaments more physically oriented, bolstered by those of temperaments which focus on proven or traditional ways so as to lower some risks and maintain the comfort of familiarity.
Yet as always it is the responsibility of those of idealist temperaments to look at the big picture with its small components so as to offer wisdom for guiding toward the better of possible futures; and those of rational intellectual temperaments to sort out among those ideal versions as to how to implement those which accumulated knowledge suggests as sufficiently feasible. Those of guardian temperaments then can work to check for harmony between these possible changes with the proven and safe traditional comfortable ways, then offer the result to those artisan temperaments to “make it so.”
All nice and orderly flow, yet the endless problem is the tendency for those high achiever artisan temperament doers taking charge of the ideals, thus forcing the running of the whole show with the limited resulting functionality’s weaknesses until the surplus of the nation has been consumed, and the borrowing beyond tolerability. Then collapse, grab what can be gotten, regroup, and go from there.
Can we do better than that, this time around? I’d like to think so, despite the sociopolitical realities’ devastation ongoing. At least in theory, KESTS to GEO appears to have the potential to totally change civilization's connectivity with the vast resources of nearby space, providing the highly efficient and continuous transportation to enable the construction of all the solar electric clean powerplants for the whole world; to provide total recycling solar powered too; provide spaceports in GEO, high efficiency location for conventional and nuclear powered spacecraft to operate from; and even vast room to build high quality livingspace for huge expansions of civilization, right on our planet's doorstep. So ... for details, see www.kestsgeo.com ... I continue to offer KESTS to GEO’s technological integration pattern for your examination, wishing us all the best possible future. Although I do my best, I cannot do it all alone. Do you wait for the big players, like those who built the railroad system so powerfully, to take over and make it happen, but only to increase their power and wealth while limited to tunnel vision? I would like to have a better future than that for my loved ones.
(Note: this energy-related post was copied over from one of my other blogs. JEDCline)
20050724 J E D Cline
As the less noble of humanity’s ways continue to smokescreen my most cherished project, the exploration and utilization of the KESTS to GEO potentials, examination of the relevant trends is prudent now. The near and more distant future quality of life seems to hinge on energy resources and re-use of materials resources, although sociopolitical power plays are likely to continue to disrupt it heavily, as usual.
Applying some wisdom to it all, it seems to me that humanity still has choices regarding their energy future potentials. Fossil fuels plentifulness is on the way out, clearly, and to what level its “greenhouse warming effect" will have on Earth’s ecosystem before it starts receding, is unclear to me. Alternatives can go the “high road or the low road”, some in-between paths more likely too. Hydroelectric sources and some wind sources can provide a baseline energy supply until their machinery made using cheap fossil fuel energy and materials, starts wearing out. Growing sugarcane and corn for making ethanol for liquid storeable fuel, and conversion of cars to run on it, can provide some baseline for truck and automobile use to some extent. Nuclear electric power is likely to be expanded again, the desperation from depletion of conventional power sources outweighing worries regarding the extremely long term toxic effects of radioactive wastes thereby produced, and how to cope with those materials. Tree material can be grown to provide both storable combustible fuel as well as construction lumber.
Recycling seems next on the list critical field, and needs to go far beyond the saving of aluminum cans, bottles and newspapers for collection. Recycling takes energy, which also is getting scarce. So, wise and responsible means need to be applied on a wide scale.
Land and Real Estate usage no doubt will continue to be the arena of those who play territorial monopoly-type games of many kinds, easy money, sweet racket: price rises rapidly with no equivalent improvement in the item.
Continuing to fail to utilize the nation’s human resources to the fullest, is likely to result in declaring “overpopulation”, thus excuse for widespread loss of life, from the birth control (including abstention techniques), illness and warfare.
The reality-testing of economical products of small and large business' narrow interests needs to be balanced with some kind of overall perspective humanity- responsible functions. The lofty principle that "if there is a real need, someone will start a business to provide it" has not been working in the real world of business, mostly corporate-interest-controlled. The overall map needs to be available to all who contribute to the business picture, to have a chance of assuring there are not big gaps in the map.
Increasing communication potentials of the Internet and computers may make a voting process that provides much of the decision making function instead of entirely government responsibility, for the overall vision’s creation and filling in of that which makes it all work together.
Insofar as we continue to not use the total human capacity, and focus on strife internal and external, distraction from the responsibility to provide the above-mentioned life needs, may become so serious that major collapse and loss of life will occur, as so cycles of the past history teaches. The KESTS to GEO conceptual design offered the alternatives of a “high road” to follow, which I’d like to think we can still attain, despite the choice so far by the powers-that-be taken choices of strife and maintain status quo of recent years that has cost the nation the finances needed to built KESTS to GEO at its finest. Bewailing the what-could-have-been may be cathartic, but otherwise ia a waste of time beyond teaching lessons about humanity’s reality at the present time. The classical cravings to maintain power-as-is will no doubt continue to dominate what opportunities actually get to happen; those who suggest other possible ways deemed irresponsible or crazy, by those of temperaments more physically oriented, bolstered by those of temperaments which focus on proven or traditional ways so as to lower some risks and maintain the comfort of familiarity.
Yet as always it is the responsibility of those of idealist temperaments to look at the big picture with its small components so as to offer wisdom for guiding toward the better of possible futures; and those of rational intellectual temperaments to sort out among those ideal versions as to how to implement those which accumulated knowledge suggests as sufficiently feasible. Those of guardian temperaments then can work to check for harmony between these possible changes with the proven and safe traditional comfortable ways, then offer the result to those artisan temperaments to “make it so.”
All nice and orderly flow, yet the endless problem is the tendency for those high achiever artisan temperament doers taking charge of the ideals, thus forcing the running of the whole show with the limited resulting functionality’s weaknesses until the surplus of the nation has been consumed, and the borrowing beyond tolerability. Then collapse, grab what can be gotten, regroup, and go from there.
Can we do better than that, this time around? I’d like to think so, despite the sociopolitical realities’ devastation ongoing. At least in theory, KESTS to GEO appears to have the potential to totally change civilization's connectivity with the vast resources of nearby space, providing the highly efficient and continuous transportation to enable the construction of all the solar electric clean powerplants for the whole world; to provide total recycling solar powered too; provide spaceports in GEO, high efficiency location for conventional and nuclear powered spacecraft to operate from; and even vast room to build high quality livingspace for huge expansions of civilization, right on our planet's doorstep. So ... for details, see www.kestsgeo.com ... I continue to offer KESTS to GEO’s technological integration pattern for your examination, wishing us all the best possible future. Although I do my best, I cannot do it all alone. Do you wait for the big players, like those who built the railroad system so powerfully, to take over and make it happen, but only to increase their power and wealth while limited to tunnel vision? I would like to have a better future than that for my loved ones.
(Note: this energy-related post was copied over from one of my other blogs. JEDCline)
Offering a way out of the mess
(Note: This post is copied over from one of my other blogs. JEDCline. It includes focus on saving transportation energy by expanded forms of telecommuting.)
Offering a way out of the mess:
1. Manufacturing machines operable remotely via the internet.
2. Raise everybody’s competency.
3. Workstations made so that their function can be quickly changed, and daily on-the-job training for all employees.
4. Complete home education for everybody, primarily via internet.
5. Everybody works.
6. “Work from home” expanded hugely.
7. Every person to have access to their position in the “Big Picture”, and to have a vote in the way things go.
Expanding to some extent on these items:
1. Machines operable via internet. For example, a drill press that is operable from a home workstation, as if on the actual work site doing its use. Not a robot standing there using a conventional drill press, no; a drillpress designed and built to be operated via instructions on the internet while sending signals describing what it is doing, to the operator via internet connection. And yes, once a particular use of the drill press to make a hole in a part, that is to be done repeatedly, can copy down the sequence made by the human operator, then repeat them thereafter for however many parts are needed. Meanwhile, the distant human operator is doing new uses to make new kinds of parts, best use of machine and of people. One such category of this would be in the making of the machines that are operable via the internet.
2. Raise everybody’s competency. This enables the whole system to perform ever better. This means everybody, including the CEO, the PhD, the sales clerk, the machine operator, the single mom at home, the homeless man on the street, too. Everybody, no one gets left out.
3. Workstations made so that their function can be quickly changed, and daily on-the-job training for all employees so as to be ever better at utilizing the alternate setups for their workstation. This was shown decades ago, as part of the “just-in-time” method of manufacturing.
4. Complete home education for everybody, primarily via internet and package shipment services where necessary. This, like the OJT, is part of the “raise everybody’s competency” function.
5. Everybody works. Even if only minutes per day, or “digging holes and filling them up again” type exercise. This builds mental and physical muscles in familiarity with the world’s resources, thus available in time of need for real projects to fulfill needs.
6. “Work from home” expanded hugely, more than just “telecommuting” once a week to save gas. This not only cuts transportation commute energy, but enables interruptions, spurts of progress, and location of personnel very flexibly, for human efficiency.
7. Every person to have access to their position in the “Big Picture”, and to have a vote in the way things go. Although I have only vague ideas as to how to generate and communicate the over model of the “big picture” at present, that it can be done, seems probably, given purpose.
J E D Cline 20050828
Offering a way out of the mess:
1. Manufacturing machines operable remotely via the internet.
2. Raise everybody’s competency.
3. Workstations made so that their function can be quickly changed, and daily on-the-job training for all employees.
4. Complete home education for everybody, primarily via internet.
5. Everybody works.
6. “Work from home” expanded hugely.
7. Every person to have access to their position in the “Big Picture”, and to have a vote in the way things go.
Expanding to some extent on these items:
1. Machines operable via internet. For example, a drill press that is operable from a home workstation, as if on the actual work site doing its use. Not a robot standing there using a conventional drill press, no; a drillpress designed and built to be operated via instructions on the internet while sending signals describing what it is doing, to the operator via internet connection. And yes, once a particular use of the drill press to make a hole in a part, that is to be done repeatedly, can copy down the sequence made by the human operator, then repeat them thereafter for however many parts are needed. Meanwhile, the distant human operator is doing new uses to make new kinds of parts, best use of machine and of people. One such category of this would be in the making of the machines that are operable via the internet.
2. Raise everybody’s competency. This enables the whole system to perform ever better. This means everybody, including the CEO, the PhD, the sales clerk, the machine operator, the single mom at home, the homeless man on the street, too. Everybody, no one gets left out.
3. Workstations made so that their function can be quickly changed, and daily on-the-job training for all employees so as to be ever better at utilizing the alternate setups for their workstation. This was shown decades ago, as part of the “just-in-time” method of manufacturing.
4. Complete home education for everybody, primarily via internet and package shipment services where necessary. This, like the OJT, is part of the “raise everybody’s competency” function.
5. Everybody works. Even if only minutes per day, or “digging holes and filling them up again” type exercise. This builds mental and physical muscles in familiarity with the world’s resources, thus available in time of need for real projects to fulfill needs.
6. “Work from home” expanded hugely, more than just “telecommuting” once a week to save gas. This not only cuts transportation commute energy, but enables interruptions, spurts of progress, and location of personnel very flexibly, for human efficiency.
7. Every person to have access to their position in the “Big Picture”, and to have a vote in the way things go. Although I have only vague ideas as to how to generate and communicate the over model of the “big picture” at present, that it can be done, seems probably, given purpose.
J E D Cline 20050828
We don't really have to be chained to Earth by rocket technology limitations
(Note: this energy-related post is copied over from one of my other blogs. JEDCline)
Written by James E. D. Cline, online 2006/01/12:
We don't really have to be chained to Earth by rocket technology limitations. I'm composing a new intro to my kestsgeo.com website here.
We all know that the only way possible for us to get high enough into space so that we don’t come right back down, is on a rocket all the way up to orbit, right? By the fiery thunderous push of big reaction engines thrusting all the way to earth orbital trajectory, the only possible real way? Actually, there are a couple of other ways possible, and far more efficient orbital access too. But why be concerned with such things?
Speaking perhaps a bit too generally in this paragraph: options need to be known so as to make intelligent decisions to guide the direction our future goes. Resources availability and utilization potentials are key items for making these decisions. Access to potential great new resources is explored here, focusing on the basic scientific principles that would be utilized along with the technologies applying them for this purpose. Then the exploration of the resource mechanisms made feasible by this type of access is done, to help decide the value of the potential resource access system, and the potential changes to civilization in general, and individual lives in particular, are projected. Attention also is given to other significant factors governing the actualization of something new, including rival technologies, corporate financial prior commitments, potential relationship to the political aspirations to power of some people.
Starting with things that are already known and easily comprehensible, we next combine them to create something not currently available for use. Then explore what could be done with it, that can’t be done otherwise.
What we are hopefully looking for, is plentiful clean energy to power civilization, ways to fully recycle all that we have finished with, create plentiful new space to comfortable live in, with comparable nutritional sources, and provide great economy for further large scale continuing resource outreach.
So lets first look at some simple mechanisms that have potential to reach beyond the conventional rocket or even tether elevator space access limitations.
An object that has been put in orbit around the planet, stays up there a long time, with no further energy addition to it. Consider a circular orbit, and instead of a single satellite in the orbit, lets have a rope that is so long as to entirely encircle the planet in that orbit. The rope does not have to be strong, or even continuous, to maintain that circular structure, at least short term.
But orbits rarely are circular, instead usually are elliptical, the orbiting object rising and falling as it rotates around the planet. Its velocity varies as it rises and falls along the ellipse, and thus our rope would stretch when it goes faster near the bottom of ellipse, and crinkle up when it goes slow up at the top of its climb. But that is only if it is a continuous rope loop.
Going beyond this form of analogy of a rope all around the Earth going at orbital velocity so as to stay there in place, we have to make it elliptical going between low and high, to be potentially useful as a lifting structure for space access. If we set the ellipse to have its high point at GEO (GeoStationary Earth Orbit), and its low point at the Earth’s equatorial surface, it is in a nice place for the desired transportation between ground and high earth orbit. This is a very primitive form, of course.
Lots of structural design details to be provided from there; but the point here is that this kind of structure could extend from the ground up to GEO, and be supported by its kinetic energy centrifugal force in itself, instead of its strength of component materials.
This is a key point needing comprehension. Again: it utilizes a kind of structure that is supported by its dynamics instead of by its strength of materials.
From there we can mechanize it, making that primitive “rope” into an armature of an electric motor. The “rope”, now an “electric motor armature”, can be made of many segments so as to cope with the varying velocity they take on as they rise and fall. And these armature segments need to go sufficiently faster than orbital velocity that they produce excess outward centrifugal force to press upward to balance the weight of the stationary stator part of the electric motor.
A very low frictional loss surface needs to be between those armatures and the stator, so it needs to be a form of magnetic levitation track surface, operating at extremely high relative velocities such as 30 kmps or more in places. That also means the stator has to enclose a hard vacuum in which those armature segments slide, protecting them, especially where it is in the atmosphere.
Other objects along the stator structure could selectively electrodynamically drag against the upward-moving armature segments, thus exerting an upward force on those objects, lifting them up from the ground. Those “objects” could be spacecraft carrying people and construction materials up from ground to GEO.
And thus this concept has reached the fulfillment of a way for an efficient and continuously operating way to access space from the ground, electrically powered, and not limited by strength of materials like an anchored tether elevator would be limited. A concept that frees us from the constraints of rocket launch technology, at least up to high earth orbit, from where it is much easier for rockets to travel far away and back. And civilization could expand greatly just mostly staying in GEO.
And thus it has potential to totally change civilization’s usage of space resources. From here we need to go both directions: deeper into the transportation structure’s electromagnetic mechanism details; and outward toward the applications the transportation could make finally possible, and then potential affects on civilization.
Sure, at this point, we need to observe it would be a huge perimeter structure, but also that it does not need to be made of unusually strong materials, since it would be supported by its dynamics, not by its strength of materials, nor limited by the rocket propulsion constraints that at the present time blocks our progress toward a civilization that has huge options for near-space resource access success in the relatively near future.
If this description has enabled you to start to "get it", and would like to explore it further with me, its further development is shown on www.kestsgeo.com.
This option provides a new kind of way for reaching toward a great future for civilization in a near time frame. But what people do with this option, is quite a different story. Perhaps it is because that, after all, we are only human.
Written by James E. D. Cline, online 2006/01/12:
We don't really have to be chained to Earth by rocket technology limitations. I'm composing a new intro to my kestsgeo.com website here.
We all know that the only way possible for us to get high enough into space so that we don’t come right back down, is on a rocket all the way up to orbit, right? By the fiery thunderous push of big reaction engines thrusting all the way to earth orbital trajectory, the only possible real way? Actually, there are a couple of other ways possible, and far more efficient orbital access too. But why be concerned with such things?
Speaking perhaps a bit too generally in this paragraph: options need to be known so as to make intelligent decisions to guide the direction our future goes. Resources availability and utilization potentials are key items for making these decisions. Access to potential great new resources is explored here, focusing on the basic scientific principles that would be utilized along with the technologies applying them for this purpose. Then the exploration of the resource mechanisms made feasible by this type of access is done, to help decide the value of the potential resource access system, and the potential changes to civilization in general, and individual lives in particular, are projected. Attention also is given to other significant factors governing the actualization of something new, including rival technologies, corporate financial prior commitments, potential relationship to the political aspirations to power of some people.
Starting with things that are already known and easily comprehensible, we next combine them to create something not currently available for use. Then explore what could be done with it, that can’t be done otherwise.
What we are hopefully looking for, is plentiful clean energy to power civilization, ways to fully recycle all that we have finished with, create plentiful new space to comfortable live in, with comparable nutritional sources, and provide great economy for further large scale continuing resource outreach.
So lets first look at some simple mechanisms that have potential to reach beyond the conventional rocket or even tether elevator space access limitations.
An object that has been put in orbit around the planet, stays up there a long time, with no further energy addition to it. Consider a circular orbit, and instead of a single satellite in the orbit, lets have a rope that is so long as to entirely encircle the planet in that orbit. The rope does not have to be strong, or even continuous, to maintain that circular structure, at least short term.
But orbits rarely are circular, instead usually are elliptical, the orbiting object rising and falling as it rotates around the planet. Its velocity varies as it rises and falls along the ellipse, and thus our rope would stretch when it goes faster near the bottom of ellipse, and crinkle up when it goes slow up at the top of its climb. But that is only if it is a continuous rope loop.
Going beyond this form of analogy of a rope all around the Earth going at orbital velocity so as to stay there in place, we have to make it elliptical going between low and high, to be potentially useful as a lifting structure for space access. If we set the ellipse to have its high point at GEO (GeoStationary Earth Orbit), and its low point at the Earth’s equatorial surface, it is in a nice place for the desired transportation between ground and high earth orbit. This is a very primitive form, of course.
Lots of structural design details to be provided from there; but the point here is that this kind of structure could extend from the ground up to GEO, and be supported by its kinetic energy centrifugal force in itself, instead of its strength of component materials.
This is a key point needing comprehension. Again: it utilizes a kind of structure that is supported by its dynamics instead of by its strength of materials.
From there we can mechanize it, making that primitive “rope” into an armature of an electric motor. The “rope”, now an “electric motor armature”, can be made of many segments so as to cope with the varying velocity they take on as they rise and fall. And these armature segments need to go sufficiently faster than orbital velocity that they produce excess outward centrifugal force to press upward to balance the weight of the stationary stator part of the electric motor.
A very low frictional loss surface needs to be between those armatures and the stator, so it needs to be a form of magnetic levitation track surface, operating at extremely high relative velocities such as 30 kmps or more in places. That also means the stator has to enclose a hard vacuum in which those armature segments slide, protecting them, especially where it is in the atmosphere.
Other objects along the stator structure could selectively electrodynamically drag against the upward-moving armature segments, thus exerting an upward force on those objects, lifting them up from the ground. Those “objects” could be spacecraft carrying people and construction materials up from ground to GEO.
And thus this concept has reached the fulfillment of a way for an efficient and continuously operating way to access space from the ground, electrically powered, and not limited by strength of materials like an anchored tether elevator would be limited. A concept that frees us from the constraints of rocket launch technology, at least up to high earth orbit, from where it is much easier for rockets to travel far away and back. And civilization could expand greatly just mostly staying in GEO.
And thus it has potential to totally change civilization’s usage of space resources. From here we need to go both directions: deeper into the transportation structure’s electromagnetic mechanism details; and outward toward the applications the transportation could make finally possible, and then potential affects on civilization.
Sure, at this point, we need to observe it would be a huge perimeter structure, but also that it does not need to be made of unusually strong materials, since it would be supported by its dynamics, not by its strength of materials, nor limited by the rocket propulsion constraints that at the present time blocks our progress toward a civilization that has huge options for near-space resource access success in the relatively near future.
If this description has enabled you to start to "get it", and would like to explore it further with me, its further development is shown on www.kestsgeo.com.
This option provides a new kind of way for reaching toward a great future for civilization in a near time frame. But what people do with this option, is quite a different story. Perhaps it is because that, after all, we are only human.
Energy realated ideas subminted to the "SinceSlicedBread" project
(Note: this is copied over from anothe of my blogs, and includes some of my more energy-related idea submissions to the "SinceSlicedBread" project.
Review transportation abilities jedc 20051202 1650hrs
The issue of transportation increases rapidly with decreasing availability of low cost energy particularly gasoline.
To fix this problem, explore the transportation efficiency of all modes of movement of people and goods, from the skateboard to the rickshaw to the cable car. Part of efficiency is the convenience of movement from actual point to point, e.g., home to work site and back. One such mode to explore would be the use of pullbands circulating around residential blocks for lightweight engineless vehicles grab so as to move from one’s home garage, along ever faster pullbands circulating down long street and freeway areas, automatically routed per selected destination; the small vehicles would occupy much less parking space and structure strength.
By not leaving the task of transportation solely up to established corporation’s profit-controlled choices, a wider range of possibilities becomes possible. Later it would be possible to have business participation in providing products for the more transportation-efficient activities.
----------------------------------------------------
Enable fine future for all 20051203 jedc 0711hrs
This issue is that a basic plan for overall future needs to be in place for humanity to have optimism and usefulness.
This idea seems “not common sense” but it is made up of many commonsense ideas. Solar Power Satellites could stop the greenhouse effect accumulation, if there were a way to get them into Geostationary Earth Orbit economically. A way to lift their components and for total recycling plants there etc. would be to create a transportation structure that encircles the earth in the shape of an orbital transfer trajectory from equator to GEO, which has its weight supported by circulating mass inside it moving far above orbital velocity thus outward centrifugal force matches gravitational force; this large 131,000 km perimeter electric motor also uses the upward-direction moving circulating mass to drag spaceships between ground and GEO thus they lift no fuel. Very efficient high capacity lift, and electrically powered, eventually powered by satellites it enables into GEO.
Working families helped by providing huge new jobs and real hope for future of their children.
------------------------------------------------------
Mental-physical exercise, energy 20051203jedc 1856
The issues are a combination of need for better use of one’s brain, more interesting physical exercise, and alternative energy sourcing availability.
Design, build, and make economically available to all working families, a form of exercise machine for home use that requires the movement of arms and legs to be contra lateral alternately (which helps build connections between the two sides of the brain), and stores the produced output energy such that it can be released in the form of electrical power for small appliances such as cell phone and laptop computers.
Benefits to working families would be that it would open up a key mental resource in people (integration between the two sides of the brain), provide a more interesting form of home exercise to reduce the obesity problem, and provide a small backup supply of electrical energy when power fails or just to see how much energy one can provide oneself, as a reality test.
Review transportation abilities jedc 20051202 1650hrs
The issue of transportation increases rapidly with decreasing availability of low cost energy particularly gasoline.
To fix this problem, explore the transportation efficiency of all modes of movement of people and goods, from the skateboard to the rickshaw to the cable car. Part of efficiency is the convenience of movement from actual point to point, e.g., home to work site and back. One such mode to explore would be the use of pullbands circulating around residential blocks for lightweight engineless vehicles grab so as to move from one’s home garage, along ever faster pullbands circulating down long street and freeway areas, automatically routed per selected destination; the small vehicles would occupy much less parking space and structure strength.
By not leaving the task of transportation solely up to established corporation’s profit-controlled choices, a wider range of possibilities becomes possible. Later it would be possible to have business participation in providing products for the more transportation-efficient activities.
----------------------------------------------------
Enable fine future for all 20051203 jedc 0711hrs
This issue is that a basic plan for overall future needs to be in place for humanity to have optimism and usefulness.
This idea seems “not common sense” but it is made up of many commonsense ideas. Solar Power Satellites could stop the greenhouse effect accumulation, if there were a way to get them into Geostationary Earth Orbit economically. A way to lift their components and for total recycling plants there etc. would be to create a transportation structure that encircles the earth in the shape of an orbital transfer trajectory from equator to GEO, which has its weight supported by circulating mass inside it moving far above orbital velocity thus outward centrifugal force matches gravitational force; this large 131,000 km perimeter electric motor also uses the upward-direction moving circulating mass to drag spaceships between ground and GEO thus they lift no fuel. Very efficient high capacity lift, and electrically powered, eventually powered by satellites it enables into GEO.
Working families helped by providing huge new jobs and real hope for future of their children.
------------------------------------------------------
Mental-physical exercise, energy 20051203jedc 1856
The issues are a combination of need for better use of one’s brain, more interesting physical exercise, and alternative energy sourcing availability.
Design, build, and make economically available to all working families, a form of exercise machine for home use that requires the movement of arms and legs to be contra lateral alternately (which helps build connections between the two sides of the brain), and stores the produced output energy such that it can be released in the form of electrical power for small appliances such as cell phone and laptop computers.
Benefits to working families would be that it would open up a key mental resource in people (integration between the two sides of the brain), provide a more interesting form of home exercise to reduce the obesity problem, and provide a small backup supply of electrical energy when power fails or just to see how much energy one can provide oneself, as a reality test.
Energy sources: energy in vs energy out
(Note:" this energy-related post is copied over from one of my other blogs. JEDCline)
Thinking about energy sources, and the sum of all the specific energies that it takes to provide them in an ongoing way, appears to me to be one of the more important endeavors needed in the present day time frame. Yet, there does not seem to usually be an accurate evaluation of all the energy that goes into the devices that produce the energy we use. It is not just the dollar cost of fuel as it goes into the powerplant; this might not be obvious yet.
Abundant economical ever available energy is one of the key ingredients for our level of civilization. Fossil fuels has been the resource that has enabled the building of industrialized civilization. And it is necessary to keep energy available to keep civilization going at our level or better. It is an important issue, yet as the difficulty of providing energy increases rapidly, evaluation of all the factors need re-examination.
For example, a decade or so ago someone made an evaluation of solar cells energy deliverance ability, vs cost of manufacture ... the energy cost of manufacture, that is. This way of thinking seems essential for effective thinking about ways to provide the energy needed now and in future. That report found that it took more energy overall to manufacture the solar cells, than the solar cells would be able to supply in their useful lifetime. The report went on to point out that the places using the solar cells was what made them valuable, since they could be used to power remote devices and facilities by sun power, without having to run powerlines to the distant site, nor endure the cost of transportation and maintenance recharging of batteries to power the remote instruments. Many of the safety telephones along freeways economically use solar cells for this reason, that they do not need power lines run to power the phones.
For the major amount of electrical power used by our country, however, power will go around on existing power lines.
The question becomes how much energy does it cost to conceptualize, design, build, deliver, install, maintain and ensure continual energy input to the energy supplier.
Wind power requires the wind turbines creation, and rent to pay landowner where the windpower generator is located, maintenance of the windmill, and eventual energy cost of recycling or disposal of the worn out machine downstream.
What is the total energy cost that goes into the machine, such as the cost of commute of the employees that build and assemble all the parts, and the energy required to smelt, cast, machine and process its component materials? In this case, it is not likely there will be a cost of ensuring availability of wind to actually input energy to the windmill, but some other kinds of energy sources do have, such as the cost of fossil fuel (including coal) powered generators, and fuel for nuclear reactor powerplants, is a very significant factor, as well as cost of subduing the toxic byproducts produced during such energy provision.
The potentials of Satellite Solar Power Stations in GEO or the Moon, without significantly contributing to greenhouse effect global warming, are not presently economical enough to build despite their attractiveness for abundant electric power delivered worldwide, because of the immense cost (especially including energy costs) of using rocket propulsion to deliver the construction materials up there, along with all it takes to build and maintain that huge equipment up there. If transportation techniques are created that enable them to be delivered up into high earth orbit economicaly, however, creation of those solar electric power stations in space, where there is abundant sun power available 24 hours a day, rain or shine below, could make them highly attractive as power sources. A big "if", however; they have to be made physical reality, to be there to be used in time of need. Meantime, we need to optimally deal with what we have already got.
It is the overall energy it takes to provide an energy source, as compared to the overall energy the energy source delivers to the user, that is the key parameter. Now, how do we implement means for determining the total sum of all the specific energies it takes to ongoingly provide a particular energy source to the user?
Jim Cline 20060320
Thinking about energy sources, and the sum of all the specific energies that it takes to provide them in an ongoing way, appears to me to be one of the more important endeavors needed in the present day time frame. Yet, there does not seem to usually be an accurate evaluation of all the energy that goes into the devices that produce the energy we use. It is not just the dollar cost of fuel as it goes into the powerplant; this might not be obvious yet.
Abundant economical ever available energy is one of the key ingredients for our level of civilization. Fossil fuels has been the resource that has enabled the building of industrialized civilization. And it is necessary to keep energy available to keep civilization going at our level or better. It is an important issue, yet as the difficulty of providing energy increases rapidly, evaluation of all the factors need re-examination.
For example, a decade or so ago someone made an evaluation of solar cells energy deliverance ability, vs cost of manufacture ... the energy cost of manufacture, that is. This way of thinking seems essential for effective thinking about ways to provide the energy needed now and in future. That report found that it took more energy overall to manufacture the solar cells, than the solar cells would be able to supply in their useful lifetime. The report went on to point out that the places using the solar cells was what made them valuable, since they could be used to power remote devices and facilities by sun power, without having to run powerlines to the distant site, nor endure the cost of transportation and maintenance recharging of batteries to power the remote instruments. Many of the safety telephones along freeways economically use solar cells for this reason, that they do not need power lines run to power the phones.
For the major amount of electrical power used by our country, however, power will go around on existing power lines.
The question becomes how much energy does it cost to conceptualize, design, build, deliver, install, maintain and ensure continual energy input to the energy supplier.
Wind power requires the wind turbines creation, and rent to pay landowner where the windpower generator is located, maintenance of the windmill, and eventual energy cost of recycling or disposal of the worn out machine downstream.
What is the total energy cost that goes into the machine, such as the cost of commute of the employees that build and assemble all the parts, and the energy required to smelt, cast, machine and process its component materials? In this case, it is not likely there will be a cost of ensuring availability of wind to actually input energy to the windmill, but some other kinds of energy sources do have, such as the cost of fossil fuel (including coal) powered generators, and fuel for nuclear reactor powerplants, is a very significant factor, as well as cost of subduing the toxic byproducts produced during such energy provision.
The potentials of Satellite Solar Power Stations in GEO or the Moon, without significantly contributing to greenhouse effect global warming, are not presently economical enough to build despite their attractiveness for abundant electric power delivered worldwide, because of the immense cost (especially including energy costs) of using rocket propulsion to deliver the construction materials up there, along with all it takes to build and maintain that huge equipment up there. If transportation techniques are created that enable them to be delivered up into high earth orbit economicaly, however, creation of those solar electric power stations in space, where there is abundant sun power available 24 hours a day, rain or shine below, could make them highly attractive as power sources. A big "if", however; they have to be made physical reality, to be there to be used in time of need. Meantime, we need to optimally deal with what we have already got.
It is the overall energy it takes to provide an energy source, as compared to the overall energy the energy source delivers to the user, that is the key parameter. Now, how do we implement means for determining the total sum of all the specific energies it takes to ongoingly provide a particular energy source to the user?
Jim Cline 20060320
The amount of work that can be done
The amount of work that can be done (Note: tis is copied over from one of my other blogs. JEDCline)
In Physics, the quantity of "energy" is defined as the amount of work that can be done in the physical world. In the world of people's affairs, the quantity of "money" is much the same, definable as the amount of work that can be done in the world of people.
And, in the world of people, just as in the world of physics, that amount of work can be used up in wastefulness, or used to create something fine and grand. That is, the amount of potential work only regulates the maximum amount of what could be done, not the existence and quality of what is done.
In Physics, the quantity of "energy" is defined as the amount of work that can be done in the physical world. In the world of people's affairs, the quantity of "money" is much the same, definable as the amount of work that can be done in the world of people.
And, in the world of people, just as in the world of physics, that amount of work can be used up in wastefulness, or used to create something fine and grand. That is, the amount of potential work only regulates the maximum amount of what could be done, not the existence and quality of what is done.
Global symbiosis
(Note: this is copied over from one of my other blogs. JEDCline)
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Life is a flowing process, of inputs, processing, and outputs. What goes in, must go out too. Living beings not only have to find food nutrition, consume and utilize its material and energy, it must also release the parts that no longer are useful. And it is the Sun's energy that powers the churning of the process.
Much as cities do with their garbage, a cat digs a hole and buries its waste product. Widening the viewpoint, it can be seen that the cat's fecal matter becomes nutrition for the plants which also receive solar-cycle purified rainwater, and powered by the solar energy from the Sun, use the combination to produce re-structured materials, vegetation that animals eat; and eventually the cat again gets fed, completing the loop. But most of the garbage buried by the cities is not in the loop, be aware. Remember what eventually happens when a process loop is broken?
Although, sometimes a broken process loop is helpful. Fossil fuels are the decayed remains of once-living beings' stuff of eons ago, too, still containing some of the potential energy input by the sun's energy to re-structure materials in ancient times; it also thereby locked in the carbon that would otherwise be in the atmosphere. For now, we have plenty of good oxygen to breathe, and perhaps still little enough greenhouse gas carbon in the atmosphere so as to still have a nice invigorating balance of winter and summer to keep nature's processes cycling well. Those living creatures of long ago that locked the carbon out of the atmosphere by storing it as coal, oil, and methane hydrates, did their job well, such that it created the air we now live and breathe in.
The release of some of that energy (and unfortunately their carbon back into the air in the form of carbon dioxide and methane) has also enabled the huge jump of civilization over the latest century; if we make that jump significantly further to enable life's expansion beyond the fossil fuel basis, perhaps it all will be worth it to the world.
There is an overall symbiosis between plants and animals on this planet, all powered by the sun. The global viewpoint shows that there is an overall symbiosis between plants and animals on the planet, and that the Sun's energy input powers the life system of living beings on the planet, the plants and animals sharing the energy in the form of re-structured materials.
Coral in the ocean forms a tight symbiosis, the animal part provides structure and nutrients, while the plant part utilizes the sun's energy to recycle the nutrients. This provides a morphological model for a possible way for civilization to continue to greatly grow without ruining the rest of the world around it.
As mankind's civilization expands to require an ever bigger slice of the pie, the sheer mega quantity of solar energy endlessly available in space above the earth looks increasingly inviting, to maintain the growth robustly and even enable a purer existence, by directly intercepting the solar energy, such as stationary above the rotating Earth in GEO, both to convert the energy into re-structured materials while up there, as well as later to completely recycle the component materials back to pure materials once the products are discarded. Raw solar energy received at GEO could power large mass spectrometer type machines in that zero-gee hard vacuum environment that would vaporize the otherwise unusable toxic garbage industrial trash materials and distribute their pure elements into buckets, for uses as if brand new stuff; thus the sun's energy would be used to reverse the entropy brought on by civilizations' processes, readying the materials for re-structuring anew, restoring the overall process loop for the cities and industry in general.
Of course, it is easier to do things as we have always done; in fact, can we really do anything we have not already done before? There are lots of ways we can squeeze more energy out of the existing ground system, by alternative energy processes. But like squeezing a grapefruit for juices, more squeezing eventually does not produce more juice. Same for natural energy sources. Even nuclear fission electric powerplants use energy stored inside suns of long ago, re-structured material on the nuclear size level, and is limited in quantity. These are the familiar paths, with less risky unknowns for the currently powerful to fear during the term of their shift; unfortunately for civilization's world, those on the next shift are likely to make the same decision, on and on. The only bravado visible here is that of men gloriously bashing into other men on gaming fields of vast variety, to see who is the winner of the pot, and trample on the vanquished, showing who is boss. In that arena, life is in the trenches even for the winners; it is just different in quality. Man is capable of much better than that.
It is likely that mankind's technological prowess is up to the task of building space access electrically powered transportation structures, such as of the anchored tether space elevator type, and of the earth-encircling dynamically centrifugally supported space carousel escalator form. and thus is surely up to the task of enabling adequate connection between ground materials and the solar powered environment in Geostationary Earth Orbit, where much can be built and utilized for civilization's vast expansion without munching the rest of the ground ecosystem's pie to destruction. Sure, it is very tempting to stick with the well practiced industrial techniques, the schoolbook-taught well known justifiable same old same old, thus not risking loss of job and stature if things go bust a bit along the march of progress. But rocketry's space access is extremely energy inefficient due to the need to lift all the fuel's mass needed for the trip to orbit; we know that, and it severely limits our ability to utilize the energy and processing environment in high earth orbit. But the within-reach potential of space access large transportation structures can change the whole nature of the opportunities possible to mankind.
So the will of man is not up to the task; business-as-usual has been living much more hand-to-mouth than what is needed to have business as usual where business has a detailed whole world view and the interests of civilization into decades from now, so as to provide the products that will be really needed by people in the world environment not just today but likely more distant tomorrows too, in case we are there. The products that were not created by the corporations are not there to provide the business, nor there to meet the needs of the consumer of tomorrow. And the corporations dare take only the tiniest of risks; the stockholders tend to care not what the products are, they just want that money to keep coming in, to fuel their living style. And the elite that guide it all dare not take risks that might dump them, nor even acknowledge they missed something important to us all, lest they lose their elite public image that feeds them so well. The will of aggressive action-doing man is just not up to the task, as it is too risky and does not pay off in their kind of coin.
Life is a flowing process, however, and inputs and outputs will go on, so long as life lasts. Plants have long had the wisdom to build as far upward as they have strength to build, and up there to spread wide to bask in the solar energy reception; will we? How far upward, far enough to not shade our roots from the rain?
.
Life is a flowing process, of inputs, processing, and outputs. What goes in, must go out too. Living beings not only have to find food nutrition, consume and utilize its material and energy, it must also release the parts that no longer are useful. And it is the Sun's energy that powers the churning of the process.
Much as cities do with their garbage, a cat digs a hole and buries its waste product. Widening the viewpoint, it can be seen that the cat's fecal matter becomes nutrition for the plants which also receive solar-cycle purified rainwater, and powered by the solar energy from the Sun, use the combination to produce re-structured materials, vegetation that animals eat; and eventually the cat again gets fed, completing the loop. But most of the garbage buried by the cities is not in the loop, be aware. Remember what eventually happens when a process loop is broken?
Although, sometimes a broken process loop is helpful. Fossil fuels are the decayed remains of once-living beings' stuff of eons ago, too, still containing some of the potential energy input by the sun's energy to re-structure materials in ancient times; it also thereby locked in the carbon that would otherwise be in the atmosphere. For now, we have plenty of good oxygen to breathe, and perhaps still little enough greenhouse gas carbon in the atmosphere so as to still have a nice invigorating balance of winter and summer to keep nature's processes cycling well. Those living creatures of long ago that locked the carbon out of the atmosphere by storing it as coal, oil, and methane hydrates, did their job well, such that it created the air we now live and breathe in.
The release of some of that energy (and unfortunately their carbon back into the air in the form of carbon dioxide and methane) has also enabled the huge jump of civilization over the latest century; if we make that jump significantly further to enable life's expansion beyond the fossil fuel basis, perhaps it all will be worth it to the world.
There is an overall symbiosis between plants and animals on this planet, all powered by the sun. The global viewpoint shows that there is an overall symbiosis between plants and animals on the planet, and that the Sun's energy input powers the life system of living beings on the planet, the plants and animals sharing the energy in the form of re-structured materials.
Coral in the ocean forms a tight symbiosis, the animal part provides structure and nutrients, while the plant part utilizes the sun's energy to recycle the nutrients. This provides a morphological model for a possible way for civilization to continue to greatly grow without ruining the rest of the world around it.
As mankind's civilization expands to require an ever bigger slice of the pie, the sheer mega quantity of solar energy endlessly available in space above the earth looks increasingly inviting, to maintain the growth robustly and even enable a purer existence, by directly intercepting the solar energy, such as stationary above the rotating Earth in GEO, both to convert the energy into re-structured materials while up there, as well as later to completely recycle the component materials back to pure materials once the products are discarded. Raw solar energy received at GEO could power large mass spectrometer type machines in that zero-gee hard vacuum environment that would vaporize the otherwise unusable toxic garbage industrial trash materials and distribute their pure elements into buckets, for uses as if brand new stuff; thus the sun's energy would be used to reverse the entropy brought on by civilizations' processes, readying the materials for re-structuring anew, restoring the overall process loop for the cities and industry in general.
Of course, it is easier to do things as we have always done; in fact, can we really do anything we have not already done before? There are lots of ways we can squeeze more energy out of the existing ground system, by alternative energy processes. But like squeezing a grapefruit for juices, more squeezing eventually does not produce more juice. Same for natural energy sources. Even nuclear fission electric powerplants use energy stored inside suns of long ago, re-structured material on the nuclear size level, and is limited in quantity. These are the familiar paths, with less risky unknowns for the currently powerful to fear during the term of their shift; unfortunately for civilization's world, those on the next shift are likely to make the same decision, on and on. The only bravado visible here is that of men gloriously bashing into other men on gaming fields of vast variety, to see who is the winner of the pot, and trample on the vanquished, showing who is boss. In that arena, life is in the trenches even for the winners; it is just different in quality. Man is capable of much better than that.
It is likely that mankind's technological prowess is up to the task of building space access electrically powered transportation structures, such as of the anchored tether space elevator type, and of the earth-encircling dynamically centrifugally supported space carousel escalator form. and thus is surely up to the task of enabling adequate connection between ground materials and the solar powered environment in Geostationary Earth Orbit, where much can be built and utilized for civilization's vast expansion without munching the rest of the ground ecosystem's pie to destruction. Sure, it is very tempting to stick with the well practiced industrial techniques, the schoolbook-taught well known justifiable same old same old, thus not risking loss of job and stature if things go bust a bit along the march of progress. But rocketry's space access is extremely energy inefficient due to the need to lift all the fuel's mass needed for the trip to orbit; we know that, and it severely limits our ability to utilize the energy and processing environment in high earth orbit. But the within-reach potential of space access large transportation structures can change the whole nature of the opportunities possible to mankind.
So the will of man is not up to the task; business-as-usual has been living much more hand-to-mouth than what is needed to have business as usual where business has a detailed whole world view and the interests of civilization into decades from now, so as to provide the products that will be really needed by people in the world environment not just today but likely more distant tomorrows too, in case we are there. The products that were not created by the corporations are not there to provide the business, nor there to meet the needs of the consumer of tomorrow. And the corporations dare take only the tiniest of risks; the stockholders tend to care not what the products are, they just want that money to keep coming in, to fuel their living style. And the elite that guide it all dare not take risks that might dump them, nor even acknowledge they missed something important to us all, lest they lose their elite public image that feeds them so well. The will of aggressive action-doing man is just not up to the task, as it is too risky and does not pay off in their kind of coin.
Life is a flowing process, however, and inputs and outputs will go on, so long as life lasts. Plants have long had the wisdom to build as far upward as they have strength to build, and up there to spread wide to bask in the solar energy reception; will we? How far upward, far enough to not shade our roots from the rain?
Civilization can go up, or likely will go down
(Note: this is copied over from one of my other blogs. JEDCline)
Civilization must go up, or most likely it will go down. Are you in on this?
Sustainable living systems, including renewable energy sources and sustainable agricultural practices, are of high importance for R&D now. Yet for the long run, going up for vaster resources is likely the key for really long term sustainability of industrial civilization.
Reaction engine transportation needs to start and end its kind of journeys up high, such as in Geostationary Earth Orbit, instead of from the ground. The concepts and technological principles already exist for efficient ground to GEO electrically powered transportation, but the will of the corporations who could physically make it happen, have not the will to do it, instead being committed to stockholder quick profit while caring not if their actions do not make a place for the stockholder's children to live well... that is not on their shift, not their problem, they think.
The tendency of so many people to focus on strife to grab as much as possible, in aggregate has rapidly bent civilization into a downward curve, although headed upward until about half a decade ago.
My efforts to reverse this increasingly massive downturn continues, but the effort is about as likely as trying to stop the Lemming's excited race to the lethal cliffs over the seaside, to relieve the population to the small few sustainable by the as-found ecosystem. In fact, right now it seems as impossible for me to stop and get the herd to turn around to constructive usefulness, as much as if I were trying to stop a stampeding herd of wild elephants in the jungle. Yet the saying goes, "you gotta have a dream, for if you don't have a dream,, how ya gonna have a dream come true?.
So here in my Space Day 2006 blog entry, i intend to both explore the disruptive factors, as well as the positive potential technologies involved in the raising of civilization up, as an overall view in context with the circumstances found currently and in the past.
As for the disruptive factors, their descriptions fit better into analogs of the animal world, than of the rational intelligent loving beings that human beings are supposed to be, getting things done harmoniously together. The phenomenon of "crab potting" is one such descriptive analog. Crab potting is that if one is gathering crabs along the seashore for dinner, if you dig a hole in the sand and put one crab in the hole, the crab will quickly get out and escape. But if you put two crabs in that hole in the sand, they will prevent each other from escaping, and they will remain available for your dinner. There seems to be a lot of "crab potting" type thing going on which has been preventing us from quickly and efficiently getting civilization up. The details of how it expressed in hampering my efforts, and probably efforts of a few others too, involve egos of academic and industrial pomp protecting their turf, and use of setups and frameups for character assassination of someone they see as out of line and has seen too much and can't keep his mouth shut.
As for the technological principles that can get civilization to really expand up in an adequately large scale way, it starts with the wonderful rockets, so exciting and spectacular, with which we are familiar, like in Apollo and the Space Shuttle. They have enabled us to prove we can reach space and live there awhile, and do constructive work and research up there. Reaction engined launch vehicles, or rockets, also show us severe limits of their potential usage.
The use of reaction engine technology transportation ground to orbit has been long perfected, with multi-stage, strap-on boosters too, have shown the range of payloads manageable at a profit, and projects which orbit go beyond this limit won't get done.
Significant progress in reducing cost of launch, such as use of unmanned "big dumb boosters" is worthy of effort. Yet the basic problem of lifting the fuel for the trip, is a basic limiting factor for this kind of space access, and sets severe limits for the projects create-able up there to advance civilization, mere outposts at best.
The Solar Power Satellite is one such example, which was proposed in 1960's, and still not feasible to be put up using reaction engined launch technology. There has been some renewed thinking re gossamer-thin SPS, however.
Many other projects only possible in GEO are not amenable to the "gossamer-thin" technology construction, such as the passively shielded 10,000-person each Stanford Torus type self-sustaining cities in space, originally designed for construction at L5 out of Lunar materials, homes for those people building SPS; but also constructable in GEO if using passive shielding that is environmentally friendly such as wood fiber reinforced ice. They require truly large scale economical lift of materials ground to GEO; so, "thinking our of the box" (the "box" being reaction engined space access, in this case) the context is atmospheric resistive winds and weather, the energy and materials expended during the lift to 22,300 miles above the equator and give orbital velocity horizontal push there, for materials to stay put up there. The good news is that the actual energy given to mass lifted from ground to GEO is small, less than $1 of electrical energy per pound mass payload lifted into GEO. Lots of things can be done at anywhere near that figure, including SPS.
Although trips from ground to space up until now have been done using action-reaction engine propelled spacecraft's detailed intricacies, there are a couple of potential very different ways to get from ground to high earth orbit. It would be wise to evaluate and R&D them to the max at the present time, while also pursuing the other paths for mankind, especially the more environmentally friendly technologies as our basis if we remain chained to the ground on into the far future, as we are headed now, unfortunately.
Although I continue to dabble in the anchored tether space elevator conceptual design aspects which began (as so many others did too back then all independently) starting circa 1969 in my case, not quite the first. Lots of potential there, and widely different configurations highly dependent on the actual obtainable strength to mass ratio of the tether material.
However, in more recent years (1988 - on) I've focused on a technique that would avoid the need for superstrength tether materials and beamed or lifted energy sources for moving elevator cars up and down the tether.
Yet, to my amazement, intelligent people don't seem to grasp the "KESTS to GEO", or "Carousel Space Escalator to GEO" conceptual basics; they are fairly simple yet very un-ordinary. And that is the problem in communication of the concept, I think: it is un-ordinary.
Although I don't have nearly the mental abilities of people like O'Neill and Clarke, I do have much the same general overall visions; and I have persistence and integration skills, and much practical experience in making electronic gadget designs into reality that work on the physical level, into manufacturable products, while employed as an electronics engineering technician for decades in complex fields: a high competence in taking a design vision and making it work for real.
So let me again explain something that is un-ordinary, yet each part is simple. Let's start with the thought of a "hoop", the round thing that is the outer part of a wheel.
Actually several concentric hoops, sliding around the circumference of the overall hoop. And we will eventually make the hoop as an electric motor shaped as a hoop, with motionless stator and rotating armatures; but for now lets look at the dynamics of a hoop that is spinning, That spinning causes centrifugal force on the hoop, pressing its parts outward away from its center of rotation. We are going to use this principle of outward centrifugal force to balance an externally imposed inward force. Let's make that hoop be huge, say a hoop that fills an entire low earth orbital circumference above the earth's equator.
Sure, it's big; but not nearly so big as the length of all the beverage cans we make and use each year, which if put end to end would reach back and forth from ground to the moon and back several times, a far greater size.
Nonetheless, it is an un-ordinary visualization, a hoop that is so big it is larger than the planet's circumference of 24,000 miles. If the hoop is spinning at the orbital velocity at that altitude, all parts of it are "in orbit", staying there for now. Its outward centrifugal force just exactly balances the inward force of the earth's gravitational field on the mass of the hoop's parts. This is plain old normal orbital mechanics, except really a lot of orbiting objects all in the same path. it could have an enormous mass, yet would stay high above the earth, supported by its outward centrifugal force created by its rotation; and it rotates around the Earth. Is this agreeable to you, so far?
We next need to manipulate this concept for supporting mass above the earth, to ultimately become a transportation structure between ground and orbital altitude, preferably as high as Geostationary Earth orbit, stationary relative to the earth's surface in its 24 day's rotation. To make it a ground to GEO shape, change it for now from a circular orbit to an elliptical orbit which has its low point in contact with the earth's surface at the equator, and elliptically encircling the planet to reach to GEO above the far side of the earth.
The hoop is actually three hoop types sliding around closely together, remember. One hoop section is not rotating relative to the earth, and is solidly anchored into the earth somewhere along the equator, such as in a tunnel in the Ecuadorean Andes mountain range.
The second hoop is rotating far faster than orbital velocity, so the surplus outward centrifugal force balances the weight of the aforementioned stationary hoop with its loads; this speedy hoop needs be made of discontinuous parts as they exchange kinetic and potential energy as they rise and fall relative to the earth. And those discontinuous masses are in the form of armature segments with permanent magnets embedded, thus the armature of our hoop-shaped electric motor.
At the earth surface ground connection site (eg, that tunnel in Andes mountains) electrical energy from outward sources (for now) is used to accelerate the armature segments as they whizz past, restoring the kinetic energy that was used up in their trip around the planet-encircling hoop structure.
And the third "hoop" is also generally discontinuous, being the aggregate of the captive spacecraft being lifted by inductive drag against the high velocity upward bound armature segments, lifting the spacecraft up from the ground to GEO, where they discharge their payload, and take on new space-resource cargo for the gentle efficient return to the ground along the structure.
The stationary part of the hoop also provides a hard vacuum environment for the high velocity armature segments where the structure is within the atmosphere.
And the armature segments are in counter-rotating paired mass streams, laterally coupled through the stationary part of the structure, to balance some gyroscopic precession forces, and to provide upward bound armature mass streams everywhere along the structure.
The sliding hoops need to have a very slippery, low-loss sliding surface nature, thus a special variety of magnetic levitation track technology needs to be developed, one that works in a hard vacuum at tens of kilometers per second relative velocities; lots of potential for electromagnetic induction there going up as the cube of the velocity, usable for induced magnetic levitation principles.
The armature mass streams can be arranged around inside the stationary part of the hoop, and differential electrodynamic drag between the sides of the armature mass streams would provide a small bending force, usable for servopositioning in response to varying lateral loads including from atmospheric wind forces.
Hopefully this description gets the reader past the problem of the "un-ordinary" and give a glimpse of how such a transportation structure can extend between ground and GEO, supported by the kinetic energy stored within itself. If you are interested, many details have already been worked out and most are on my websites and in my papers published as part of ASCE space conference proceedings in 2000, 2002 and 2004.
And the things such a transportation structure can enable built in GEO are incredible, expanding civilization up there, and making efficient reaching out from GEO instead of the ground, to the materials resources of the solar system from there via reaction engined powered spacecraft, bringing back construction materials from the Moon and asteroids, for starters. Building Mars colonies would be a quite different adventure, and far more likely to succeed, with such a background, is another example.
Building many huge SPS in GEO could provide the environmentally friendly electric power delivered to nations around the world, beginning the reduction of CO2 greenhouse effect problems; giant solar powered mass-spectrometer type element separators in GEO could be total recycling for toxic idustrial waste products; Stanford Torus design inspired cities in GEO could be built and occupied by vast numbers of people in artificial gravity comfort.
Isn't this a better goal for humanity, instead of continuing the warring at each other for rights to dwindling resources of a world we have been surely killing? Sure, we know how to make war far better than know how to make these space structures; and making war is so exciting! That is, unless oneself is among the bystanders that get mangled while the behemoths are grappling.
Can we set aside the egos of academic and industrial pomp protecting their turf, and use of setups and frameups for character assassination of someone they see as out of place, and has seen too much and can't keep his mouth shut?
Actually, the creation and use of the Carousel Space Escalator and its enabled applications in GEO, is likely to provide excitement and adventure galore, if we give it a solid chance. And thus provide a much healthier world and civilization to pass on to our progeny.
And the upcoming problem of having enough assignable energy for huge manned spacecraft launches in a world starving for energy, gets avoided when SPS built in GEO beam down solar-derived electric power to the structure's ground accelerator site, thus ensuring continued access to space, regardless of the availability of conventional energy resources thereafter.
And, this is happening on our shift. Can we turn our vision away from the addiction to strife's glories of upsmanship, and instead settle down to responsible and equally exciting but far more comfortable life works, such as the vision described here? Civilization must go up, or most likely it will go down. Are you in on this?
Jim Cline
www.kestsgeo.com
jedcline1@kestsgeo.com
Civilization must go up, or most likely it will go down. Are you in on this?
Sustainable living systems, including renewable energy sources and sustainable agricultural practices, are of high importance for R&D now. Yet for the long run, going up for vaster resources is likely the key for really long term sustainability of industrial civilization.
Reaction engine transportation needs to start and end its kind of journeys up high, such as in Geostationary Earth Orbit, instead of from the ground. The concepts and technological principles already exist for efficient ground to GEO electrically powered transportation, but the will of the corporations who could physically make it happen, have not the will to do it, instead being committed to stockholder quick profit while caring not if their actions do not make a place for the stockholder's children to live well... that is not on their shift, not their problem, they think.
The tendency of so many people to focus on strife to grab as much as possible, in aggregate has rapidly bent civilization into a downward curve, although headed upward until about half a decade ago.
My efforts to reverse this increasingly massive downturn continues, but the effort is about as likely as trying to stop the Lemming's excited race to the lethal cliffs over the seaside, to relieve the population to the small few sustainable by the as-found ecosystem. In fact, right now it seems as impossible for me to stop and get the herd to turn around to constructive usefulness, as much as if I were trying to stop a stampeding herd of wild elephants in the jungle. Yet the saying goes, "you gotta have a dream, for if you don't have a dream,, how ya gonna have a dream come true?.
So here in my Space Day 2006 blog entry, i intend to both explore the disruptive factors, as well as the positive potential technologies involved in the raising of civilization up, as an overall view in context with the circumstances found currently and in the past.
As for the disruptive factors, their descriptions fit better into analogs of the animal world, than of the rational intelligent loving beings that human beings are supposed to be, getting things done harmoniously together. The phenomenon of "crab potting" is one such descriptive analog. Crab potting is that if one is gathering crabs along the seashore for dinner, if you dig a hole in the sand and put one crab in the hole, the crab will quickly get out and escape. But if you put two crabs in that hole in the sand, they will prevent each other from escaping, and they will remain available for your dinner. There seems to be a lot of "crab potting" type thing going on which has been preventing us from quickly and efficiently getting civilization up. The details of how it expressed in hampering my efforts, and probably efforts of a few others too, involve egos of academic and industrial pomp protecting their turf, and use of setups and frameups for character assassination of someone they see as out of line and has seen too much and can't keep his mouth shut.
As for the technological principles that can get civilization to really expand up in an adequately large scale way, it starts with the wonderful rockets, so exciting and spectacular, with which we are familiar, like in Apollo and the Space Shuttle. They have enabled us to prove we can reach space and live there awhile, and do constructive work and research up there. Reaction engined launch vehicles, or rockets, also show us severe limits of their potential usage.
The use of reaction engine technology transportation ground to orbit has been long perfected, with multi-stage, strap-on boosters too, have shown the range of payloads manageable at a profit, and projects which orbit go beyond this limit won't get done.
Significant progress in reducing cost of launch, such as use of unmanned "big dumb boosters" is worthy of effort. Yet the basic problem of lifting the fuel for the trip, is a basic limiting factor for this kind of space access, and sets severe limits for the projects create-able up there to advance civilization, mere outposts at best.
The Solar Power Satellite is one such example, which was proposed in 1960's, and still not feasible to be put up using reaction engined launch technology. There has been some renewed thinking re gossamer-thin SPS, however.
Many other projects only possible in GEO are not amenable to the "gossamer-thin" technology construction, such as the passively shielded 10,000-person each Stanford Torus type self-sustaining cities in space, originally designed for construction at L5 out of Lunar materials, homes for those people building SPS; but also constructable in GEO if using passive shielding that is environmentally friendly such as wood fiber reinforced ice. They require truly large scale economical lift of materials ground to GEO; so, "thinking our of the box" (the "box" being reaction engined space access, in this case) the context is atmospheric resistive winds and weather, the energy and materials expended during the lift to 22,300 miles above the equator and give orbital velocity horizontal push there, for materials to stay put up there. The good news is that the actual energy given to mass lifted from ground to GEO is small, less than $1 of electrical energy per pound mass payload lifted into GEO. Lots of things can be done at anywhere near that figure, including SPS.
Although trips from ground to space up until now have been done using action-reaction engine propelled spacecraft's detailed intricacies, there are a couple of potential very different ways to get from ground to high earth orbit. It would be wise to evaluate and R&D them to the max at the present time, while also pursuing the other paths for mankind, especially the more environmentally friendly technologies as our basis if we remain chained to the ground on into the far future, as we are headed now, unfortunately.
Although I continue to dabble in the anchored tether space elevator conceptual design aspects which began (as so many others did too back then all independently) starting circa 1969 in my case, not quite the first. Lots of potential there, and widely different configurations highly dependent on the actual obtainable strength to mass ratio of the tether material.
However, in more recent years (1988 - on) I've focused on a technique that would avoid the need for superstrength tether materials and beamed or lifted energy sources for moving elevator cars up and down the tether.
Yet, to my amazement, intelligent people don't seem to grasp the "KESTS to GEO", or "Carousel Space Escalator to GEO" conceptual basics; they are fairly simple yet very un-ordinary. And that is the problem in communication of the concept, I think: it is un-ordinary.
Although I don't have nearly the mental abilities of people like O'Neill and Clarke, I do have much the same general overall visions; and I have persistence and integration skills, and much practical experience in making electronic gadget designs into reality that work on the physical level, into manufacturable products, while employed as an electronics engineering technician for decades in complex fields: a high competence in taking a design vision and making it work for real.
So let me again explain something that is un-ordinary, yet each part is simple. Let's start with the thought of a "hoop", the round thing that is the outer part of a wheel.
Actually several concentric hoops, sliding around the circumference of the overall hoop. And we will eventually make the hoop as an electric motor shaped as a hoop, with motionless stator and rotating armatures; but for now lets look at the dynamics of a hoop that is spinning, That spinning causes centrifugal force on the hoop, pressing its parts outward away from its center of rotation. We are going to use this principle of outward centrifugal force to balance an externally imposed inward force. Let's make that hoop be huge, say a hoop that fills an entire low earth orbital circumference above the earth's equator.
Sure, it's big; but not nearly so big as the length of all the beverage cans we make and use each year, which if put end to end would reach back and forth from ground to the moon and back several times, a far greater size.
Nonetheless, it is an un-ordinary visualization, a hoop that is so big it is larger than the planet's circumference of 24,000 miles. If the hoop is spinning at the orbital velocity at that altitude, all parts of it are "in orbit", staying there for now. Its outward centrifugal force just exactly balances the inward force of the earth's gravitational field on the mass of the hoop's parts. This is plain old normal orbital mechanics, except really a lot of orbiting objects all in the same path. it could have an enormous mass, yet would stay high above the earth, supported by its outward centrifugal force created by its rotation; and it rotates around the Earth. Is this agreeable to you, so far?
We next need to manipulate this concept for supporting mass above the earth, to ultimately become a transportation structure between ground and orbital altitude, preferably as high as Geostationary Earth orbit, stationary relative to the earth's surface in its 24 day's rotation. To make it a ground to GEO shape, change it for now from a circular orbit to an elliptical orbit which has its low point in contact with the earth's surface at the equator, and elliptically encircling the planet to reach to GEO above the far side of the earth.
The hoop is actually three hoop types sliding around closely together, remember. One hoop section is not rotating relative to the earth, and is solidly anchored into the earth somewhere along the equator, such as in a tunnel in the Ecuadorean Andes mountain range.
The second hoop is rotating far faster than orbital velocity, so the surplus outward centrifugal force balances the weight of the aforementioned stationary hoop with its loads; this speedy hoop needs be made of discontinuous parts as they exchange kinetic and potential energy as they rise and fall relative to the earth. And those discontinuous masses are in the form of armature segments with permanent magnets embedded, thus the armature of our hoop-shaped electric motor.
At the earth surface ground connection site (eg, that tunnel in Andes mountains) electrical energy from outward sources (for now) is used to accelerate the armature segments as they whizz past, restoring the kinetic energy that was used up in their trip around the planet-encircling hoop structure.
And the third "hoop" is also generally discontinuous, being the aggregate of the captive spacecraft being lifted by inductive drag against the high velocity upward bound armature segments, lifting the spacecraft up from the ground to GEO, where they discharge their payload, and take on new space-resource cargo for the gentle efficient return to the ground along the structure.
The stationary part of the hoop also provides a hard vacuum environment for the high velocity armature segments where the structure is within the atmosphere.
And the armature segments are in counter-rotating paired mass streams, laterally coupled through the stationary part of the structure, to balance some gyroscopic precession forces, and to provide upward bound armature mass streams everywhere along the structure.
The sliding hoops need to have a very slippery, low-loss sliding surface nature, thus a special variety of magnetic levitation track technology needs to be developed, one that works in a hard vacuum at tens of kilometers per second relative velocities; lots of potential for electromagnetic induction there going up as the cube of the velocity, usable for induced magnetic levitation principles.
The armature mass streams can be arranged around inside the stationary part of the hoop, and differential electrodynamic drag between the sides of the armature mass streams would provide a small bending force, usable for servopositioning in response to varying lateral loads including from atmospheric wind forces.
Hopefully this description gets the reader past the problem of the "un-ordinary" and give a glimpse of how such a transportation structure can extend between ground and GEO, supported by the kinetic energy stored within itself. If you are interested, many details have already been worked out and most are on my websites and in my papers published as part of ASCE space conference proceedings in 2000, 2002 and 2004.
And the things such a transportation structure can enable built in GEO are incredible, expanding civilization up there, and making efficient reaching out from GEO instead of the ground, to the materials resources of the solar system from there via reaction engined powered spacecraft, bringing back construction materials from the Moon and asteroids, for starters. Building Mars colonies would be a quite different adventure, and far more likely to succeed, with such a background, is another example.
Building many huge SPS in GEO could provide the environmentally friendly electric power delivered to nations around the world, beginning the reduction of CO2 greenhouse effect problems; giant solar powered mass-spectrometer type element separators in GEO could be total recycling for toxic idustrial waste products; Stanford Torus design inspired cities in GEO could be built and occupied by vast numbers of people in artificial gravity comfort.
Isn't this a better goal for humanity, instead of continuing the warring at each other for rights to dwindling resources of a world we have been surely killing? Sure, we know how to make war far better than know how to make these space structures; and making war is so exciting! That is, unless oneself is among the bystanders that get mangled while the behemoths are grappling.
Can we set aside the egos of academic and industrial pomp protecting their turf, and use of setups and frameups for character assassination of someone they see as out of place, and has seen too much and can't keep his mouth shut?
Actually, the creation and use of the Carousel Space Escalator and its enabled applications in GEO, is likely to provide excitement and adventure galore, if we give it a solid chance. And thus provide a much healthier world and civilization to pass on to our progeny.
And the upcoming problem of having enough assignable energy for huge manned spacecraft launches in a world starving for energy, gets avoided when SPS built in GEO beam down solar-derived electric power to the structure's ground accelerator site, thus ensuring continued access to space, regardless of the availability of conventional energy resources thereafter.
And, this is happening on our shift. Can we turn our vision away from the addiction to strife's glories of upsmanship, and instead settle down to responsible and equally exciting but far more comfortable life works, such as the vision described here? Civilization must go up, or most likely it will go down. Are you in on this?
Jim Cline
www.kestsgeo.com
jedcline1@kestsgeo.com
More on energy and getting SPS into GEO
(Note: this is copied over from one of my other blogs. JEDCline)
.
Energy is a relative thing, the difference between high pressure and lower pressure, the difference between hot and colder, between fast and slower. Energy is the ability to do work. Forces of the natural world that we harvest, harness to do our work for us; as we direct its changes from a higher form to a lower form, getting our task done along the way.
The creation of a windmill has much in common with creating Solar Power Satellites in GEO.
So for an analogous example, to convert wind energy we need to do all necessary to create a windmill at an appropriate location, and connect it to the electric power grid; anchored to the mass of the the earth, the windmill's blades drag against the fast moving air pathway, slowing the air a bit while converting that wind movement redirected to electrical energy increase.
It takes thought and energy and materials (and human physical activity) to create the windmill, and generally the amount of energy extracted and input to the power grid needs to be far more than the sum energy used to create the windmill there. To some extent this energy can be equated to monetary terms, but the complications of human involvements in the processes of creating the on-site windmill weigh heavily on those monetary descriptions.
The vast collections of ideas humanity has compiled thru history (each idea hard-won originally) is the instrument of thought that provides the patterns for human activity in the creation of the windmill or whatever the device contrived to get out work done by the forces of nature. Given somehow the unified activity of people sufficient to get the project going and done, more energy (and perhaps other involvement usefulness) needs be gotten out of the result, than is put into its original creation.
Thus the chemical fueled reaction engine propulsion for ground to space access technique we have used exclusively so far for space activity, the energy of fuel to lift from ground to GEO far exceeds the energy expectable from SPS in GEO, especially considering energy used to build the launch vehicle and infrastructure, as well as in the building of the parts for the SPS. This is why the mid-1970's approach of building SSPS at L5 (equidistant from the Moon and the Earth) out of lunar materials by people living in Stanford Torus type cities in L5, was conceived.
We were on a roll then, routinely landing Apollos on the lunar surface; those who foresaw our need for clean electrical abundant energy delivered worldwide by SPS built there, forgot that the reason we were landing on the Moon was not to prepare the way for civilization's future success through space resources, but instead to block a rival nation from building missile launch stations on the Moon, rivals who had attempted to do that in Cuba recently at the time, and next were aimed at getting to the Moon. When war threats were sufficiently prevented by our Apollo project, having won the "space race", Apollo dried up and so went the dreams of SPS built in L5 out of Lunar materials.
Three decades later, the energy crisis has overtaken us now, and we still struggle to find ways for chemical propelled rockets to be used (since that is a technology we know how to use well, and businesses are set up to do that abundantly) to put SPS into GEO, maybe gossamer-thin SPS lifted on big dumb rockets; or even build them on the Moon mostly out of Lunar materials, and beam energy at the Earth's rectenna power receivers from there: still trying to do it the old way, or so it seems.
Thoughts of other means for lifting up there have sloshed around in mankind's thinking mill, now more driven by the hungers of stomach and egos in the raised awareness we need clean energy more, and maybe it is getting serious?
Jeers at ideas of Earth-rotatated counterweight supported anchored tether space elevators made of "Unobtanium," have given way to consideration of carbon fiber derived tethers of constant stress cross-section, something to climb up and down upon; and if a high enough strength to mass ratio tether material is created, then true counterbalanced elevator car lift is conceivable, the tether ribbons slung between pulleys located at ground and above GEO.
Another kind of ground to GEO access structure is also conceivable, a structure that fully encircles the Earth and is whirling around the planet so fast that its outward centrifugal force counterbalances the weight of the parts of the structure that are not whirling. Its path would resemble an orbital transfer trajectory ellipse between earth surface on the equator, up around to a high point above the opposite side of the planet at GEO altitude. Some of the kinetic energy of that circulating high velocity mass stream that is moving upward, could be used via electrodynamic braking upward to lift the vehicles up the structure to GEO. All electric, this transportation technique could eventually be sustained by some of the SPS electrical power it enables built in GEO.
So, some potentially adequate techniques for lifting SPS constructions materials from ground to GEO exist in the thought base of civilization.
As to whether or not SPS get built there, depends on the comprehension that survival of America depends not on just keeping the rival's rocket nukes off the moon, but instead in the providing of environmentally clean adequate power to America and indeed the whole world, to throttle down the greenhouse gas bringing on cascade failure of the world environment. Will this comprehension exceed the inertia of industry and business? No sign of it happening so far. Even the potentials of the anchored tether space elevator and/or that of the carousel space escalator concepts represent aerospace corporations being aced out by the elevator/escalator concept becoming "the only game in town" thus is an unacceptable thing in the eyes of those who are rich and powerful enough to make these things happen: a "catch 22" kind of thing that probably is already too late to save the world ecosystem if the recent analysis by the scientist James Lovelock, originator of the term "Gaia", the world's unified living entity, is correct "(Lovelock: The Point of No Return is Behind Us.")
The shakers & movers of this nation did not take on the Apollo project to save civilization's future, they did it for self preservation from a human threat; and they still cannot conceive of threat to their supportive system as being of nature's needs for survival along with their own, thus nothing gets done to preserve civilization this way. We need to have multi-focused paths for survival, certainly, including the creation of ways to harness land-accessible forms of extracting solar-originated energy of wind and water and direct sunlight; and carefully of nuclear energy. The well being of general mankind may well be dependent on them getting those who have focused on personal power to find ways to make the fastest megabuck while lolling around in luxury unimaginable by most of us. Can we get their attention enough to be responsible to civilization, a somewhat different focus than making money and playing the ego power games?
Even the corporate kind of "entity" has the form of snobbery called the "NIH" (the "Not Invented Here" syndrome), that interferes with the wisest selection of ideas which pattern possibilities. Much of the managerial leadership is driven by climbing around in the org chart, the hierarchy of people, instead of technological arenas of energy and resources and human consumption, other than considering them as forces of motivation sources of their income and social delights.
It may come down to the old problem of how the people can get the bully mentalities which cleverly grabbed leadership over them, to pause enough from battle's excitements of board room and elsewhere, to much more responsibly lead them all into better survival and even plentifulness? It is likely that such people don't actually "see" the environment they crush, seeing only people as significant items in the world. Felling the opponent, rewarding the ally, and the goodies all default into the winner's hands. To get their assistance in saving the world, somehow the task needs be put into terms of which they can be aware. Put the task into terms of people, not in terms of the vaster natural world of which people are only parts, yet which make in aggregate such major impact.
Again, some potentially adequate techniques for lifting SPS constructions materials from ground to GEO already do exist in the thought base of civilization, and are ready for serious R&D. That is not the major problem.
by Jim Cline on 20060725
.
Energy is a relative thing, the difference between high pressure and lower pressure, the difference between hot and colder, between fast and slower. Energy is the ability to do work. Forces of the natural world that we harvest, harness to do our work for us; as we direct its changes from a higher form to a lower form, getting our task done along the way.
The creation of a windmill has much in common with creating Solar Power Satellites in GEO.
So for an analogous example, to convert wind energy we need to do all necessary to create a windmill at an appropriate location, and connect it to the electric power grid; anchored to the mass of the the earth, the windmill's blades drag against the fast moving air pathway, slowing the air a bit while converting that wind movement redirected to electrical energy increase.
It takes thought and energy and materials (and human physical activity) to create the windmill, and generally the amount of energy extracted and input to the power grid needs to be far more than the sum energy used to create the windmill there. To some extent this energy can be equated to monetary terms, but the complications of human involvements in the processes of creating the on-site windmill weigh heavily on those monetary descriptions.
The vast collections of ideas humanity has compiled thru history (each idea hard-won originally) is the instrument of thought that provides the patterns for human activity in the creation of the windmill or whatever the device contrived to get out work done by the forces of nature. Given somehow the unified activity of people sufficient to get the project going and done, more energy (and perhaps other involvement usefulness) needs be gotten out of the result, than is put into its original creation.
Thus the chemical fueled reaction engine propulsion for ground to space access technique we have used exclusively so far for space activity, the energy of fuel to lift from ground to GEO far exceeds the energy expectable from SPS in GEO, especially considering energy used to build the launch vehicle and infrastructure, as well as in the building of the parts for the SPS. This is why the mid-1970's approach of building SSPS at L5 (equidistant from the Moon and the Earth) out of lunar materials by people living in Stanford Torus type cities in L5, was conceived.
We were on a roll then, routinely landing Apollos on the lunar surface; those who foresaw our need for clean electrical abundant energy delivered worldwide by SPS built there, forgot that the reason we were landing on the Moon was not to prepare the way for civilization's future success through space resources, but instead to block a rival nation from building missile launch stations on the Moon, rivals who had attempted to do that in Cuba recently at the time, and next were aimed at getting to the Moon. When war threats were sufficiently prevented by our Apollo project, having won the "space race", Apollo dried up and so went the dreams of SPS built in L5 out of Lunar materials.
Three decades later, the energy crisis has overtaken us now, and we still struggle to find ways for chemical propelled rockets to be used (since that is a technology we know how to use well, and businesses are set up to do that abundantly) to put SPS into GEO, maybe gossamer-thin SPS lifted on big dumb rockets; or even build them on the Moon mostly out of Lunar materials, and beam energy at the Earth's rectenna power receivers from there: still trying to do it the old way, or so it seems.
Thoughts of other means for lifting up there have sloshed around in mankind's thinking mill, now more driven by the hungers of stomach and egos in the raised awareness we need clean energy more, and maybe it is getting serious?
Jeers at ideas of Earth-rotatated counterweight supported anchored tether space elevators made of "Unobtanium," have given way to consideration of carbon fiber derived tethers of constant stress cross-section, something to climb up and down upon; and if a high enough strength to mass ratio tether material is created, then true counterbalanced elevator car lift is conceivable, the tether ribbons slung between pulleys located at ground and above GEO.
Another kind of ground to GEO access structure is also conceivable, a structure that fully encircles the Earth and is whirling around the planet so fast that its outward centrifugal force counterbalances the weight of the parts of the structure that are not whirling. Its path would resemble an orbital transfer trajectory ellipse between earth surface on the equator, up around to a high point above the opposite side of the planet at GEO altitude. Some of the kinetic energy of that circulating high velocity mass stream that is moving upward, could be used via electrodynamic braking upward to lift the vehicles up the structure to GEO. All electric, this transportation technique could eventually be sustained by some of the SPS electrical power it enables built in GEO.
So, some potentially adequate techniques for lifting SPS constructions materials from ground to GEO exist in the thought base of civilization.
As to whether or not SPS get built there, depends on the comprehension that survival of America depends not on just keeping the rival's rocket nukes off the moon, but instead in the providing of environmentally clean adequate power to America and indeed the whole world, to throttle down the greenhouse gas bringing on cascade failure of the world environment. Will this comprehension exceed the inertia of industry and business? No sign of it happening so far. Even the potentials of the anchored tether space elevator and/or that of the carousel space escalator concepts represent aerospace corporations being aced out by the elevator/escalator concept becoming "the only game in town" thus is an unacceptable thing in the eyes of those who are rich and powerful enough to make these things happen: a "catch 22" kind of thing that probably is already too late to save the world ecosystem if the recent analysis by the scientist James Lovelock, originator of the term "Gaia", the world's unified living entity, is correct "(Lovelock: The Point of No Return is Behind Us.")
The shakers & movers of this nation did not take on the Apollo project to save civilization's future, they did it for self preservation from a human threat; and they still cannot conceive of threat to their supportive system as being of nature's needs for survival along with their own, thus nothing gets done to preserve civilization this way. We need to have multi-focused paths for survival, certainly, including the creation of ways to harness land-accessible forms of extracting solar-originated energy of wind and water and direct sunlight; and carefully of nuclear energy. The well being of general mankind may well be dependent on them getting those who have focused on personal power to find ways to make the fastest megabuck while lolling around in luxury unimaginable by most of us. Can we get their attention enough to be responsible to civilization, a somewhat different focus than making money and playing the ego power games?
Even the corporate kind of "entity" has the form of snobbery called the "NIH" (the "Not Invented Here" syndrome), that interferes with the wisest selection of ideas which pattern possibilities. Much of the managerial leadership is driven by climbing around in the org chart, the hierarchy of people, instead of technological arenas of energy and resources and human consumption, other than considering them as forces of motivation sources of their income and social delights.
It may come down to the old problem of how the people can get the bully mentalities which cleverly grabbed leadership over them, to pause enough from battle's excitements of board room and elsewhere, to much more responsibly lead them all into better survival and even plentifulness? It is likely that such people don't actually "see" the environment they crush, seeing only people as significant items in the world. Felling the opponent, rewarding the ally, and the goodies all default into the winner's hands. To get their assistance in saving the world, somehow the task needs be put into terms of which they can be aware. Put the task into terms of people, not in terms of the vaster natural world of which people are only parts, yet which make in aggregate such major impact.
Again, some potentially adequate techniques for lifting SPS constructions materials from ground to GEO already do exist in the thought base of civilization, and are ready for serious R&D. That is not the major problem.
by Jim Cline on 20060725
Ideas for coping with the climate crisis
(Note: this is copied over from another of my blogs. JEDC)
Although the climate crisis is bigger than we are, we are a big enough part of the problem that if we instead become part of the solution, it will make a significant difference.
Although government does not now want to be funding large new projects, the government surely has the responsibility to maintain an overview of the relationship of the country to the world, and keep the citizens advised of what is happening and provide suggestions for what individuals and corporate businesses can do to be part of the solution instead of being part of the problem.
As you know, energy, and civilization's waste products toxic to nature, are major worldwide problems now. Industrial civilization depends on abundant cheap energy, and that has been coming primarily from fossil fuels. This has become increasingly damaging to the world environment such as by the hazards of drilling offshore and in wilderness preserve areas; and by the carbon dioxide, CO2, that is the major waste product from the combustion of petrochemical fuels with the oxygen in our air, and causing a climate crisis.
Investing in building the infrastructure for utilizing the energy derived from the Sun's radiant energy upon the Earth is an important way to lift the burden off the use of fossil fuel resources and the CO2 byproduct that is warming the planet too much. These include modalities now being used, such as hydroelectric powerplants, wind farms, photovoltaic cells, and solar ovens for cooking food.
However, there are ways to greatly reduce the wastage in use of fossil fuels, that can make a significant difference and pay for itself, but takes some very different ways of looking at things. Transportation is one area that looks quite promising for this approach. If we can look at a 10 year time frame for payback plus profit, some possibilities come to mind.
For example, let us imagine that "we" buy the design rights for the 1990 Honda Civic Hatchback from Honda, along with any tooling and assembly data they have remaining on that now obsolete vehicle, 16 years into history. So it ought to be a cheap design purchase; obtaining working ones around the country ought to still be possible for examples. I owned one of them and it got 42 mpg on the freeway commute in the Los Angeles area, and handled great on the road, had a/c cruise control and plenty of room inside; and engine still did not use oil up at 160,000 miles when it was squished in a multi-car wreck from which I walked away. It did have some design flaws in the positioning of the alternator and electrical relays too near the driver, which ought to take less than half a million dollars to modify. In this scenario the government (state or national) would provide loans and enough guidance for the project to re-create this proven vehicle in the context of the need. If they are produceable in multi-million quantities here in the US, cost probably would be maybe $10,000 each or significantly less, a lot less if all vehicles were identical except for paint color. These new vehicles would be offered in direct exchange for any vehicle which gets less than 18 mpg, regardless of age or condition of the gas hog. Thereafter, for each of these new vehicle's 10,000 miles of commute, at say average of 36 mpg, it has saved the consumption of 555 gallons of refined gasoline; at a cost of $2.50 per gallon, that is $1,380 per 10,000 miles driven. If the average vehicle is driven 100,000 miles, that is a savings of $13,800, so the vehicle has long since paid for its cost to the nation, and produced a substantial profit of over 30%. Each individual who did the vehicle exchange has a new vehicle free (or remaining payments to yet make on the former old gas hog vehicle) and is saving $2.50 in gas for every 18 miles driven. But more importantly to the world ecosystem's climate, it has saved the use of 5,500 gallons of fuel per vehicle. For each 1,000,000 vehicles thus replaced and utilized, this is a savings of 5,500,000,000 gallons of refined petrochemical fuel to remain in the world's reserves becoming more precious with time for non-fuel uses; along with preventing its enormous amount of CO2 from being dumped into the atmosphere to add to global weather disruption and resultant sea level rise.
Surely this is a lot wiser than drilling offshore for more of the petrochemical reserve's early extraction and use and CO2 production. Can such a concept be integrated into a free enterprise system? Since it is overall a profit-making activity, that seems reasonable. All it takes is the government's overseeing that the overall purpose is being fulfilled and to provide the financial buffering for the long term 10 year investment in the world's ecosystem future upon which life depends.
James E. D. Cline
jedcline@kestsgeo.com
Although the climate crisis is bigger than we are, we are a big enough part of the problem that if we instead become part of the solution, it will make a significant difference.
Although government does not now want to be funding large new projects, the government surely has the responsibility to maintain an overview of the relationship of the country to the world, and keep the citizens advised of what is happening and provide suggestions for what individuals and corporate businesses can do to be part of the solution instead of being part of the problem.
As you know, energy, and civilization's waste products toxic to nature, are major worldwide problems now. Industrial civilization depends on abundant cheap energy, and that has been coming primarily from fossil fuels. This has become increasingly damaging to the world environment such as by the hazards of drilling offshore and in wilderness preserve areas; and by the carbon dioxide, CO2, that is the major waste product from the combustion of petrochemical fuels with the oxygen in our air, and causing a climate crisis.
Investing in building the infrastructure for utilizing the energy derived from the Sun's radiant energy upon the Earth is an important way to lift the burden off the use of fossil fuel resources and the CO2 byproduct that is warming the planet too much. These include modalities now being used, such as hydroelectric powerplants, wind farms, photovoltaic cells, and solar ovens for cooking food.
However, there are ways to greatly reduce the wastage in use of fossil fuels, that can make a significant difference and pay for itself, but takes some very different ways of looking at things. Transportation is one area that looks quite promising for this approach. If we can look at a 10 year time frame for payback plus profit, some possibilities come to mind.
For example, let us imagine that "we" buy the design rights for the 1990 Honda Civic Hatchback from Honda, along with any tooling and assembly data they have remaining on that now obsolete vehicle, 16 years into history. So it ought to be a cheap design purchase; obtaining working ones around the country ought to still be possible for examples. I owned one of them and it got 42 mpg on the freeway commute in the Los Angeles area, and handled great on the road, had a/c cruise control and plenty of room inside; and engine still did not use oil up at 160,000 miles when it was squished in a multi-car wreck from which I walked away. It did have some design flaws in the positioning of the alternator and electrical relays too near the driver, which ought to take less than half a million dollars to modify. In this scenario the government (state or national) would provide loans and enough guidance for the project to re-create this proven vehicle in the context of the need. If they are produceable in multi-million quantities here in the US, cost probably would be maybe $10,000 each or significantly less, a lot less if all vehicles were identical except for paint color. These new vehicles would be offered in direct exchange for any vehicle which gets less than 18 mpg, regardless of age or condition of the gas hog. Thereafter, for each of these new vehicle's 10,000 miles of commute, at say average of 36 mpg, it has saved the consumption of 555 gallons of refined gasoline; at a cost of $2.50 per gallon, that is $1,380 per 10,000 miles driven. If the average vehicle is driven 100,000 miles, that is a savings of $13,800, so the vehicle has long since paid for its cost to the nation, and produced a substantial profit of over 30%. Each individual who did the vehicle exchange has a new vehicle free (or remaining payments to yet make on the former old gas hog vehicle) and is saving $2.50 in gas for every 18 miles driven. But more importantly to the world ecosystem's climate, it has saved the use of 5,500 gallons of fuel per vehicle. For each 1,000,000 vehicles thus replaced and utilized, this is a savings of 5,500,000,000 gallons of refined petrochemical fuel to remain in the world's reserves becoming more precious with time for non-fuel uses; along with preventing its enormous amount of CO2 from being dumped into the atmosphere to add to global weather disruption and resultant sea level rise.
Surely this is a lot wiser than drilling offshore for more of the petrochemical reserve's early extraction and use and CO2 production. Can such a concept be integrated into a free enterprise system? Since it is overall a profit-making activity, that seems reasonable. All it takes is the government's overseeing that the overall purpose is being fulfilled and to provide the financial buffering for the long term 10 year investment in the world's ecosystem future upon which life depends.
James E. D. Cline
jedcline@kestsgeo.com
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